Chapter 12

If Gray cherished any lingering doubts as to the loyalty of Mallow, erstwhile victim of his ruthlessness, or of McWade and Stoner, the wildcat promoters, those doubts vanished during the next day or two. As a matter of fact, the readiness, nay, the enthusiasm with which they fell in with his schemes convinced him that he had acted wisely in yielding to an impulse to trust them. At first, when he divulged his enemy's identity, they were thunderstruck; mere mention of Henry Nelson's name rendered them speechless and caused them to regard their employer as a harmless madman, but as he unfolded his plans in greater detail they listened with growing respect. The idea seized them finally. In the first place, it was sufficiently fantastic to appeal to their imaginations, for they saw in Gray a lone wolf with the courage and the ferocity to single out and pull down the leader of the herd, and, what was more, they scented profit to themselves in trailing with him. Then, too, the enterprise promised to afford free scope for their ingenuity, their cunning, their devious business methods, and that could be nothing less than pleasing to men of their type.

But early enough he made it plain that he intended and would tolerate no actual dishonesty; crooked methods were both dangerous and unsatisfactory, he told them, hence the fight must be fair even though merciless. To annoy, to harass, to injure, and if possible actually to ruin the banker, that was his intention; to accomplish those ends he was willing to employ any legitimate device, however shrewd, however smart. His entire fortune--and his associates, of course, greatly exaggerated its size--would be available for the purpose, and when he sketched out the measures he had in mind the trio of rogues realized that here indeed was a field wide enough for the exercise of their peculiar gifts. They acknowledged, too, a certain pleasure in the comfortable assurance that they would involve themselves in no illegal consequences.

At their first council of war Gray gave each of them a number of definite things to do or to have done, the while he sought certain facts; when they assembled for a second time, it was to compare, to tabulate, and to consider an amount of information concerning the activities of Henry Nelson that would have greatly surprised that gentleman had he been present to hear it.

For one thing, there had been prepared a comprehensive list of the Nelson holdings, together with maps showing their acreage and production, the location of drilling wells, the ownership of adjoining properties, and the like. There was also a considerable amount of data concerning the terms of the Nelson leases, renewal dates, and such matters. Gray was forced reluctantly to admit that his enemy was more strongly intrenched than he had supposed; careful study of the data showed that the Nelson acreage had been well selected and that it was scientifically "checkerboarded"