There were reasons why
Belding's gun held for him a gloomy fascination.
The Chases, those grasping and conscienceless agents of a new force
in the development of the West, were bent upon Belding's ruin,
and so far as his fortunes at Forlorn River were concerned, had
almost accomplished it. One by one he lost points for which he
contended with them. He carried into the Tucson courts the matter
of the staked claims, and mining claims, and water claims, and he
lost all. Following that he lost his government position as inspector
of immigration; and this fact, because of what he considered its
injustice, had been a hard blow. He had been made to suffer a
humiliation equally as great. It came about that he actually had
to pay the Chases for water to irrigate his alfalfa fields. The
never-failing spring upon his land answered for the needs of
household and horses, but no more.
These matters were unfortunate for Belding, but not by any means
wholly accountable for his worry and unhappiness and brooding hate.
He believed Dick Gale and the rest of the party taken into the
desert by the Yaqui had been killed or lost. Two months before
a string of Mexican horses, riderless, saddled, starved for grass
and wild for water, had come in to Forlorn River. They were a part
of the horses belonging to Rojas and his band. Their arrival
complicated the mystery and strengthened convictions of the loss
of both pursuers and pursued. Belding was wont to say that he had
worried himself gray over the fate of his rangers.
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