The fathomless, dominant gaze caught and held his eyes. “Mr. Eaton, I came here to crush Ridgway. I am going to stay here till I do. I’m going to wipe him from the map of Montana—ruin him so utterly that he can never recover. It has been my painful duty to do this with a hundred men as strong and as confident as he is. After undertaking such an enterprise, I have never faltered and never relented. The men I have ruined were ruined beyond hope of recovery. None of them have ever struggled to their feet again. I intend to make Waring Ridgway a pauper.” Stephen Eaton could have conceived nothing more merciless than this man’s callous pronouncement, than the calm certainty of his unemphasized words. He started to reply, but Harley took the words out of his mouth. “Don’t make a mistake. Don’t tie to the paltry successes he has gained. I have not really begun to fight yet.” The young man had nothing to say. His heart was water. He accepted Harley’s words as true, for he had told himself the same thing a hundred times. Why had Ridgway rejected the overtures of this colossus of finance? It had been the sheerest folly born of madness to suppose that anybody could stand against him. “For Ridgway, the die is cast,” the iron voice went on. “He is doomed beyond hope. But there is still a chance for you. What do you consider your interest in the Mesa Ore-producing Company worth, Mr. Eaton?” The sudden question caught Eaton with the force of a surprise. “About three hundred thousand dollars,” he heard himself say; and it seemed to him that his voice was speaking the words without his volition. “I’m going to buy you out for twice that sum. Furthermore, I’m going to take care of your future—going to see that you have a chance to rise.” The waverer’s will was in flux, but the loyalty in him still protested. “I can’t desert my chief, Mr. Harley.” “Do you call it desertion to leave a raging madman in a sinking boat after you have urged him to seek the safety of another ship?” “He made me what I am.” “And I will make you ten times what you are. With Ridgway you have no chance to be anything but a subordinate. He is the Mesa Ore-producing Company, and you are merely a cipher. I offer your individuality a chance. I believe in you, and know you to be a strong man.” No ironic smile touched Harley’s face at this statement. “You need a chance, and I offer it to you. For your own sake take it.” Every grievance Eaton had ever felt against his chief came trooping to his mind. He was domineering. He did ride rough-shod over his allies’ opinions and follow the course he had himself mapped out. All the glory of the victory he absorbed as his due. In the popular opinion, Eaton was as a farthing-candle to a great electric search-light in comparison with Ridgway. “He trusts me,” the tempted man urged weakly. He was slipping, and he knew it, even while he assured himself he would never betray his chief.