Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/319

 "If you'll look back from the top, Ed, you'll see a pretty direct line that you cut to your objective," she said, in gentle correction. "You came into the tangle like a blindfolded and shackled man, but you struck to the knot of it with a penetration that was admirable, I think."

"I happened on to a few things," he admitted, "but I didn't push ahead, I didn't force anybody's hand."

"I know Uncle Hal was afraid of you from the first hour. He begged you to keep hands off, hoping to free himself in his own desperate way. He never could have done it; all the time he was sinking deeper in the mire."

"It was a degrading situation for a man of Senator Nearing's mettle, the man I always thought him to be when I was a boy."

"It was a degrading situation for all of us, that black monster master over this house. It is to you we owe our redemption, for there's no telling what the end would have been if you hadn't come here to the range and forced Findlay's hand—for you did force his hand, no matter what you say."

"Maybe for the last trick or two," Barrett admitted, mightily comforted and exalted in his own opinion of himself by her praise.

"What would have happened if you hadn't come the other night?" she asked, censuring him with her eyes for his disparagement of his own fitness and valor.

"We'd better not think of that," said he, drawing her away from it by the almost sharp, commanding sternness of his voice, as one covers from a child the sight of some fearful thing.