"
"Nothing doing, young man. Remember, you are not in a position to ask
favours."
"Then I suppose we'll have to go down fighting?"
"I do not anticipate much of a fight."
"You'll get as much as I can give you."
"I'm not at all apprehensive."
"And I'll begin by running your woods-boss out of the country."
"Ah-h!"
"You know why, of course--those burl panels in your dining room.
Rondeau felled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl
for you, Colonel Pennington."
Pennington flushed. "I defy you to prove that," he almost shouted.
"Very well. I'll make Rondeau confess; perhaps he'll even tell me who
sent him after the burl. Upon my word, I think you inspired that
dastardly raid. At any rate, I know Rondeau is guilty, and you, as
his employer and the beneficiary of his crime, must accept the
odium."
The Colonel's face went white. "I do not admit anything except that
you appear to have lost your head, young man. However, for the sake
of argument: granting that Rondeau felled that tree, he did it under
the apprehension that your Valley of the Giants is a part of my Squaw
Creek timber adjoining."
"I do not believe that. There was malice in the act--brutality even;
for my mother's grave identified the land as ours, and Rondeau felled
the tree on her tombstone.
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