Wade tightened up the linen bands, and kicked forward a straight-backed chair, into which he forced Moran and lashed him fast there, to all of which the agent made no great protest, knowing that to do so would be useless. He grunted and swore a bit under his breath, but that was all. When he was well trussed up, the ranchman made a gag out of what was left of the linen and his own handkerchief and strapped it into his prisoner's mouth with his belt. When the job was done, and it was a good one, he grinned again in that slow, terrible way. A grin that bore no semblance to human mirth, but was a grimace of combined anger and hatred. Once before, during the fight at the ranch, Bill Santry had seen this expression on his employer's face, but not to the degree that Dorothy now saw it. It frightened her. "Oh, Gordon, don't, please!" She closed her eyes to shut out the sight. "Come, we must hurry away." "Good night," Wade said ironically, with a last look at Moran. He let Dorothy draw him away then, and by the time they reached the street he was his old boyish self again. Aping Moran, he slipped his arm around her waist, but she did not shrink from _his_ embrace, unexpected though it was. "Say, kid," he laughed mockingly. "Kiss me once, won't you?" CHAPTER XIII INTO THE DEPTHS "Good Lord, Race! What's happened?" Senator Rexhill, on the next morning, surprised that Moran did not show up at the hotel, had gone in search of him, and was dumbfounded when he entered the office. Moran, in his desperate efforts to free himself, had upset the chair into which he was tied, and being unable to right it again, had passed most of the night in a position of extreme discomfort. Toward morning, his confinement had become positive agony, and he had inwardly raved at Wade, the gag in his mouth making audible expression impossible, until he was black in the face. "My God, Race!" the Senator exclaimed, when, having cut the lashings and withdrawn the gag, he saw his agent in a state bordering on collapse, "what has happened to you?" He helped the man to his feet and held him up. "My throat--dry--whiskey!" Moran gasped, and groaned as he clutched at the desk, from which he slid into a chair, where he sat rubbing his legs, which ached with a thousand pains. Rexhill found a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a shelf in the closet. He poured out a generous drink of the liquor and handed it to Moran, but the agent could not hold it in his swollen fingers. The Senator picked up the glass, which had not broken in its fall and, refilling it, held it to Moran's lips. It was a stiff drink, and by the time it was repeated, the agent was revived somewhat. "Now, tell me," urged Rexhill.