The Fighting Chance

"Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!" gasped Plank.

"Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this world?" asked Mortimer coolly. "And as for Sylvia Landis, she'd be tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Plank, alarmed; "You wouldn't make a joke of it! you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm not on joking terms with him; I'm on most formal terms."

"Quarrier!" sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop. "He's on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in; that's his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a better man looked sideways at her?" And, reversing his riding crop, he deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

"A--a better man!" muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

"Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make better is it with the ladies--God bless 'em!" he added, displaying a heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough: "Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But--"

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

"But--what?" he blurted out.

"Plank," said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling, "Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a--a vital question."

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering: "Look here, Plank: you don't suppose I'm capable of repeating a confidence, do you?--if you choose to make me understand it's a confidence."

"It isn't a confidence; it isn't anything; I mean it is confidential, of course. All there's in it is what I said--or rather what you took me up on so fast," ended Plank, abashed.

"About your being in love with Syl--"

"Confound it!" roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no matter what they hunt--the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.