in your Klondike? Or why don't you clear out and live a natural
life, for instance, like mine? You see, I can ask questions,
too. Now you talk and let me listen for a while."

It was not until ten o'clock that Daylight parted from Ferguson.
As he rode along through the starlight, the idea came to him of
buying the ranch on the other side of the valley. There was no
thought in his mind of ever intending to live on it. His game was
in San Francisco. But he liked the ranch, and as soon as he got
back to the office he would open up negotiations with Hillard.
Besides, the ranch included the clay-pit, and it would give him the
whip-hand over Holdsworthy if he ever tried to cut up any didoes.



CHAPTER X

The time passed, and Daylight played on at the game. But the
game had entered upon a new phase. The lust for power in the
mere gambling and winning was metamorphosing into the lust for
power in order to revenge. There were many men in San Francisco
against whom he had registered black marks, and now and again,
with one of his lightning strokes, he erased such a mark. He
asked no quarter; he gave no quarter. Men feared and hated him,
and no one loved him, except Larry Hegan, his lawyer, who would
have laid down his life for him. But he was the only man with
whom Daylight was really intimate, though he was on terms of
friendliest camaraderie with the rough and unprincipled following
of the bosses who ruled the Riverside Club.