“Sure!  Deny it.  What do we care? ...  We’ve got you, Neuman,” burst out Anderson, his heavy voice ringing with passion.  “But it’s not your low-down plot thet’s r’iled me.  There’s been a good many men who’ve tried to do away with me.  I’ve outplayed you in many a deal.  So your personal hate for me doesn’t count.  I’m sore—­an’ you an’ me can’t live in the same place, because you’re a damned traitor.  You’ve lived here for twenty years.  You’ve grown rich off the country.  An’ you’d sell us to your rotten Germany.  What I think of you for that I’m goin’ to tell you.”

Anderson paused to take a deep breath.  Then he began to curse Neuman.  All the rough years of his frontier life, as well as the quieter ones of his ranching days, found expression in the swift, thunderous roll of his terrible scorn.  Every vile name that had ever been used by cowboy, outlaw, gambler, leaped to Anderson’s stinging tongue.  All the keen, hard epithets common to the modern day he flung into Neuman’s face.  And he ended with a profanity that was as individual in character as its delivery was intense.

“I’m callin’ you for my own relief,” he concluded, “an’ not that I expect to get under your hide.”

Then he paused.  He wiped the beaded drops from his forehead, and he coughed and shook himself.  His big fists unclosed.  Passion gave place to dignity.

“Neuman, it’s a pity you an’ men like you can’t see the truth.  That’s the mystery to me—­why any one who had spent half a lifetime an’ prospered here in our happy an’ beautiful country could ever hate it.  I never will understand that.  But I do understand that America will never harbor such men for long.  You have your reasons, I reckon.  An’ no doubt you think you’re justified.  That’s the tragedy.  You run off from hard-ruled Germany.  You will not live there of your own choice.  You succeed here an’ live in peace an’ plenty....  An’, by God! you take up with a lot of foreign riffraff an’ double-cross the people you owe so much!...  What’s wrong with your mind?...  Think it over....  An’ that’s the last word I have for you.”

Anderson, turning to his desk, took up a cigar and lighted it.  He was calm again.  There was really sadness where his face had shown only fury.  Then he addressed Dorn.

“Kurt, it’s up to you now,” he said.  “As my superintendent an’ some-day partner, what you’ll say goes with me....  I don’t know what bein’ square would mean in relation to this man.”

Anderson sat down heavily in his desk chair and his face became obscured in cigar smoke.

“Neuman, do you recognize me?” asked Dorn, with his flashing eyes on the rancher.

“No,” replied Neuman.

“I’m Chris Dorn’s son.  My father died a few days ago.  He overtaxed his heart fighting fire in the wheat ...  Fire set by I.W.W. men.  Glidden’s men! ...  They burned our wheat.  Ruined us!”

Neuman showed shock at the news, at the sudden death of an old friend, but he did not express himself in words.