Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/211

Rh apparent impossibility of getting the American rancher to combine, you are having difficulty to find local capital?" asked Quong with a slightly sarcastic emphasis.

"I am."

"I should like to supply the necessary capital for you to make a start, such a start as would furnish an object lesson that these people you propose to enrich cannot ignore."

"As a partner?"

Quong raised his eyebrows.

"It would be a new and not popular partnership, I fancy. White and—yellow." Again the vein of sarcasm cropped out slightly. "No.

"Mr. Sheridan, I am greatly in your debt. You saved me at Metzal Depot once. Again at Coyote Springs. But for you I should be run out of the country. Unwittingly, but truly, you have supplied me with information it might have taken me months—of waiting—to secure. I need your help, the help of a man who is honorable. As you have trusted me, I trust you. I do not ask a partnership, I offer one. I have no fancy for your cattle breeding, nor for your country—without offence. I am triply grateful to you. Words cannot repay it. I have not offered them. I have waited. I have knowledge of buried riches. I do not seek to erase my debt with cold metal against the services you have rendered with a warm heart. You are still necessary to my success. I can offer you the opportunity to develop your project, your object lesson, your answer to Bolshevism."