Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/281

 pened. The chances are ten to one against it. But we 'll say you're right. Put yourself in Meldrum's place. What would he do?"

Beaudry turned a gray, agonized face on his friend. "I don't know. What—what would he do?"

"The way to get at it is to figure yourself in his boots. Remember that you 're a bad, rotten lot, cur to the bone. You meet up with this girl and get her in yore power. You 've got a grudge against her because she spoiled yore plans, and because through her you were handed the whaling of yore life and are being hounded out of the country. You 're sore clear through at all her people and at all her friends. Naturally, you 're as sweet-tempered as a sore-headed bear, and you 've probably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree."

"I know what a devil he is. The question is how far would he dare go?"

"You 've put yore finger right on the point, son. What might restrain him would n't be any moral sense, but fear. He knows that once he touched Miss Rutherford, this country would treat him like a rattlesnake. He could not even be sure that the Rutherfords would not hunt him down in Mexico."