"There's a gang of big men in Frisco, an' in the East, figurin' to run a railroad through the basin. A year or so ago there was secret talk of it in the capital. It leaked out that the railroad guys was intendin' to run their road through the basin. They was goin' to build a town right where the Rancho Seco lays; an' they was plannin' to irrigate a lot of the land around there. The governor says it was to be big--an' likely it'll be big, when they get around to it. "But them things go slow, an' a gang of cheap crooks got wise to it. They sent Haydon down here, to scare the folks in the basin into sellin' out for a song. They've scared one man out--a Pole from the west end. But the others have stuck. Looks like they was figurin' on grabbin' the Rancho Seco without payin' _anything_ for it--Haydon intendin', I reckon, to put dad an' me out of the way an' marry Barbara. Then he could have cut the ranch up into town lots an' made a mint of coin." "An' Deveny?" "Deveny's a wolf. Haydon brought him here from Arizona--where he'd terrorized a whole county, runnin' it regardless. He figured to cash in, I reckon, but he's been grabbin' up everything he could lay his hands on, on the way." "You'll be tellin' Barbara, now?" suggested Harlan. "You're shoutin'!" said Morgan, his eyes glowing. "I'm hittin' the breeze to the Rancho Seco for fair." He looked at Haydon, and his eyes took on a new expression. "I was almost forgettin' what the governor sent me here for," he added. "The governor was wantin' to know who is behind Haydon an' Deveny, an' I'm rummagin' around in Haydon's office to find out. Goin'?" he invited. Both looked down at Haydon as they passed him, and an instant later they were entering a door of the ranchhouse. They had hardly disappeared when Haydon's head moved slightly. His eyes were open; he glanced at the door of the ranchhouse through which Harlan and Morgan had entered. Then he raised his head, dragged himself to an elbow--upon which he rested momentarily, his face betraying the bitter malignance and triumph that had seized him. He had realized that Morgan had meant to kill him, even before Morgan had revealed his identity, and his backward movement, which had brought him against the wall of the ranchhouse had been made with design. He had felt that even if he should succeed in beating Morgan, Harlan would have taken up the quarrel, for he knew that Harlan also had designs on his life. And with a cupidity aroused over the desperate predicament in which he found himself, he had decided to take a forlorn chance. Morgan's bullet had struck him, but by a convulsive side movement at the instant Morgan's gun roared Haydon had escaped a fatal wound, and the bullet had entered his left side above the heart, paralyzing one of the big muscles of the shoulder.