Ambushed

It was a paragraph from one of the last letters that riveted Dick's attention. Translated into English, it ran as follows: "You ask, my dear son, whether I have relinquished the great grant made us by Facundo Megares. In effect I have. During the past two years I have twice, acting as governor, conveyed to settlers small tracts from this grant. The conditions under which such a grant must be held are too onerous. Moreover, neither I nor you, nor your son, nor his son will live to see the day when there is not range enough for all the cattle that can be brought into the province. Just now time presses, but in a later letter I shall set forth my reasons in detail."

A second and a third time Dick read the paragraph to make sure that he had not misunderstood it. The meaning was plain. There could be no doubt about it. In black and white he had a statement from old Don Bartolomé himself that he considered the grant no longer valid, that he had given it up because he did not think it worth holding. He had but to prove the handwriting in court--a thing easy enough to do, since the Don's bold, stiff writing could be found on a hundred documents--and the Valdés claimants would be thrown out of possession.

Gordon looked in vain for the "later letter" to which Bartolomé referred. Either it had never been written or it had been destroyed. But without it he had enough to go on.