Gordon had resumed his usual suavity. "When I say enemies," he qualified, "of course, I mean it only in a business sense. I heard that the Trust had withdrawn, discouraged by their losses, but, now that they re-enter the field, I shall have to fight them. They would have done well to consult me--to buy me off, rather than be bled by O'Neil. They shall pay well for their mistake, but--it's incredible! That man has the luck of the devil." That evening he and Denny sat with their heads together until a late hour, and when they retired Gordon had begun to whip new plans into shape. XX HOW GORDON CHANGED HIS ATTACK O'Neil's return to Omar was triumphal. All his lieutenants gathered to meet him at the pier and the sincerity of their welcome stirred him deeply. His arrangements with Illis had taken time; he had been delayed at Seattle by bridge details and the placing of steel contracts. He had worked swiftly, and with such absorption that he had paid little heed to the rumors of Gordon's latest activities. Of the new venture which his own success had inspired he knew only the bare outline. He had learned enough, however, to arouse his curiosity, and as soon as the first confusion of his arrival at the front was over he asked for news. "Haven't you read the papers?" inquired "Happy Tom." He had attached himself to O'Neil at the moment of his stepping ashore, and now followed him to headquarters, with an air of melancholy satisfaction in mere physical nearness to his chief. "Barely!" O'Neil confessed. "I've been working twenty hours a day getting that steel under motion." Dr. Gray said with conviction: "Gordon is a remarkable man. It's a pity he's crooked." "I think it's dam' lucky," declared Tom. "He's smarter than us, and if he wasn't handicapped by a total lack of decency he'd beat us." "After the storm," explained Gray, "he moved back to Hope, and we thought he'd made his last bow, but in some way he got the idea that the Trust was back of us." "So I judged from the little I read." "Well, we didn't undeceive him, of course. His first move was an attack through the press in the shape of a broadside against the Heidlemanns. It fairly took our breaths. It appeared in the Cortez Courier and all over the States, we hear--a letter of defiance to Herman Heidlemann. It declared that the Trust was up to its old tricks here in Alaska had gobbled the copper; had the coal tied up under secret agreements, and was trying to get possession of all the coast-range passes and defiles--the old story. But the man can write. That article caused a stir." "I saw it."