Laughingly, with much good-humored jest, they had made up the $25,000 between them and then trailed off to Harrah's box at the opera, taking Bruce with them, where he contributed his share to the gaiety of the evening by observing quite seriously that the famous tenor sounded to him like nothing so much as a bull-elk bugling.
Harrah's subscription which had headed the list had been half of his winnings and the other half had gone to his favorite charity--The Home For Crippled Children. "If you get in a hole and need a little more I might dig up a few thousand," he told Bruce privately, but the others stated plainly that they would not commit themselves to further sums or be liable for assessments.
Bruce had gone about with Harrah since then and with so notable a sponsor the world became suddenly a pleasant, friendly place and life plain sailing; but now every detail had been attended to, and, eager to begin, Bruce was leaving on the morrow, this dinner being in the nature of a farewell party.
To see Bruce in the East and in the company of these men on top of Dill's telegram was a culminating blow to Sprudell, as effective as though it had been planned. Stunned at first by the loss of the water-right which made the ground valueless, then startled, and astonished by Bruce's unexpected appearance, all his thoughts finally resolved themselves into a furious, overmastering desire to defeat him. Revenge, always his first impulse when injured, was to become an obsession. Whatever there was of magnanimity, of justice, or of honor, in Sprudell's nature was to become poisoned by the venom of his vindictive malice where it concerned Bruce Burt.
Bruce had altered materially in appearance since that one occasion in his life, in Sprudell's office, when he had been conscious of his clothes. Those he now wore were not expensive but they fitted him and for the first time in many years he had something on his feet other than hob-nailed miner's shoes. Also he laid aside his stetson because, as he explained when Harrah deplored the change, he thought "it made folks look at him." "Folks" still looked at him for even in the correct habiliments of civilization he somehow looked picturesque and alien. Powerfully built, tanned, with his wide, forceful gestures, his utter lack of self-consciousness, there was stamped upon him indelibly the freedom and broadness of the great outdoors.
He was the last person, even in that group, all of whose members were more or less notable, who would have been suspected of a cold-blooded murder.
Against her will Helen found herself looking at him. It seemed unnatural; she was shocked at herself, but he attracted her irresistibly. Her brother's murderer was handsome in a dark, serious, unsmiling way which appealed to her strongly.