In five minutes the great herd was out of sight, and only the distant rumble of their speeding hoofs reached the captives.  Later, the moon, no longer golden, but shedding a silvery radiance over all, shone down upon a peaceful plain.  The night hum of insects was undisturbed.  The mournful cry of the coyote echoed at intervals, but near by, where the camp fire no longer put the fear of man into the hearts of the scavengers of the prairie, all was still and calm.  The prisoners moaned softly, but not loud enough to disturb the peace of the perfect night, as their cruel bonds gnawed at their patience.  For the rest, the Western world had resumed its wonted air.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HUE AND CRY

“A thousand head of cattle, John!  A thousand; and ‘hustled’ from under our very noses.  By thunder! it is intolerable.  Over thirty-five thousand dollars gone in one clean sweep.  Why, I say, do we pay for the up-keep of the police if this sort of thing is allowed to go on?  It is disgraceful.  It means ruination to the country if a man cannot run his stock without fear of molestation.  Who said that scoundrel Retief was dead—­drowned in the great muskeg?  It’s all poppy-cock, I tell you; the man’s as much alive as you or I. Thirty-five thousand dollars!  By heavens!—­it’s—­it’s scandalous!”

Lablache leant forward heavily in his chair and rested his great arms upon John Allandale’s desk.  “Poker” John and he were seated in the former’s office, whither the money-lender had come, post-haste, on receiving the news of the daring raid of the night before.  The great man’s voice was unusually thick with rage, and his asthmatical breathing came in great gusts as his passionate excitement grew under the lash of his own words.  The old rancher gazed in stupefied amazement at the financier.  He had not as yet fully realized the fact with which he had just been acquainted in terms of such sweeping passion.  The old man’s brain was none too clear in the mornings now.  And the suddenness of the announcement had shocked his faculties into a state of chaos.

“Terrible—­terrible,” was all he was able to murmur.  Then, bracing himself, he asked weakly, “But what are you to do?”

The weather-beaten old face was working nervously.  The eyes, in the past keen and direct in their glance, were bloodshot and troubled.  He looked like a man who was fast breaking up.  Very different from the night when we first met him at the Calford Polo Club ball.  There could be no doubt as to the origin of this swift change.  The whole atmosphere of the man spoke of drink.

Lablache turned on him without any attempt to conceal the latent ferocity of his nature.  The heavy, pouchy jowl was scarlet with his rage.  The money-lender had been flicked upon a very raw and tender spot.  Money was his god.