Y.D. stood open-mouthed. It was preposterous that this young upstart foreman on a second-rate ranch like Landson's should deliberately defy him.

"You see, Y.D.," continued Grant, with provoking calmness, "I've seen the papers. You've run a big bluff in this country. You've occupied rather more territory than was coming to you. In a word, you've been a good bit of a bully. Now--let me break it to you gently--those good old days are over. In future you're going to stay on your own side of the line. If you crowd over you'll be pushed back. You have no more right to the hay in this valley than you have to the hide on Landson's steers, and you're not going to cut it any more, at all."

Y.D. exploded in somewhat ineffective profanity. He had a wide vocabulary of invective, but most of it was of the stand-and-fight variety. There is some language which is not to be used, unless you are willing to have it out on the ground, there and then. Y.D. had no such desire. Possibly a curious sense of honor entered into the case. It was not fair to call a young man names, and although there was considerable truth in Grant's remark that Y.D. was a bully, his bullying did not take that form. Possibly, also, he recalled at that moment the obligation under which Zen's accident had placed him. At any rate he wound up rather lamely.

"Grant," he said, "if I want that hay next year I'll cut it, spite o'

h.e.l.l an' high water."

"All right, Y.D.," said Grant, cheerfully. "We'll see. Now, if you can spare me a horse to ride home, I'll have him sent back immediately."

Y.D. went to find Transley and arrange for a horse, and in a moment Zen appeared from somewhere.

"You've been quarreling with Dad," she said, half reproachfully, and yet in a tone which suggested that she could understand.

"Not exactly that," he parried. "We were just having a frank talk with each other."

"I know something of Dad's frank talks... I'm sorry... I would have liked to ask you to come and see me--to see us--my mother would be glad to see you. I can hardly ask you to come if you are going to be bad friends with Dad."

"No, I suppose not," he admitted.

"You were very good to me; very--decent," she continued.

At that moment Transley, Linder, and Y.D. appeared, with two horses.

"Linder will ride over with you and bring back the spare beast," said Y.D.

Grant shook hands, rather formally, with Y.D. and Transley, and then with Zen. She murmured some words of thanks, and just as he would have withdrawn his hand he felt her fingers tighten very firmly about his. He answered the pressure, and turned quickly away.

Transley immediately struck camp, and Y.D. and his daughter drove homeward, somewhat painfully, over the blackened hills.

Transley lost no time in finding other employment. It was late in the season to look for railway contracts, and continued dry weather had made grading, at best, a somewhat difficult business. Influx of ready money and of those who follow it had created considerable activity in a neighboring centre which for twenty years had been the princ.i.p.al cow-town of the foothill country. In defiance of all tradition, and, most of all, in defiance of the predictions of the ranchers who had known it so long for a cow-town and nothing more, the place began to grow. No one troubled to inquire exactly why it should grow, or how. As for Transley, it was enough for him that team labor was in demand. He took a contract, and three days after the fire in the foothills he was excavating for business blocks about to be built in the new metropolis.

It was no part of Transley's plan, however, to quite lose touch with the people on the Y.D. They were, in fact, the centre about which he had been doing some very serious thinking. His outspokenness with Zen and her father had had in it a good deal of bravado--the bravado of a man who could afford to lose the stake, and smile over it. In short, he had not cared whether he offended them or not. Transley was a very self-reliant contractor; he gave, even to the millionaire rancher, no more homage than he demanded in return.... Still, Zen was a very desirable girl. As he turned the matter over in his mind Transley became convinced that he wanted Zen. With Transley, to want a thing meant to get it. He always found a way. And he was now quite sure that he wanted Zen. He had not known that positively until the morning when he found her in the grey light of dawn with Dennison Grant. There was a suggestion of companionship there between the two which had cut him to the quick. Like most ambitious men, Transley was intensely jealous.

Up to this time Transley had not thought seriously of matrimony. A wife and children he regarded as desirable appendages for declining years--for the quiet and shade of that evening toward which every active man looks with such irrational confidence. But for the heat of the day--for the climb up the hill--they would be unnecessary enc.u.mbrances.

Transley always took a practical view of these matters. It need hardly be stated that he had never been in love; in fact Transley would have scouted the idea of any pa.s.sion which would throw the practical to the winds. That was a thing for weaklings, and, possibly, for women.

But his attachment for Zen was a very practical matter. Zen was the only heir to the Y.D. wealth. She would bring to her husband capital and credit which Transley could use to good advantage in his business. She would also bring personality--a delightful individuality--of which any man might be proud. She had that fine combination of attractions which is expressed in the word charm. She had health, const.i.tution, beauty.

She had courage and sympathy. She had qualities of leadership. She would bring to him not only the material means to build a house, but the spiritual qualities which make a home. She would make him the envy of all his acquaintances. And a jealous man loves to be envied.

So after the work on the excavations had been properly started Transley turned over the detail to the always dependable Linder, and, remarking that he had not had a final settlement with Y.D., set out for the ranch in the foothills. While spending the long autumn day alone in the buggy he was able to turn over and develop plans on an even more ambitious scale than had occurred to him amid the hustle of his men and horses.

The valley was lying very warm and beautiful in yellow light, and the setting sun was just capping the mountains with gold and painting great splashes of copper and bronze on the few clouds becalmed in the heavens, when Transley's tired team jogged in among the cl.u.s.ter of buildings known as the Y.D. The rancher met him at the bunk-house. He greeted Transley with a firm grip of his great palm, and with jaws open in suggestion of a sort of carnivorous hospitality.

"Come up to the house, Transley," he said, turning the horses over to the attention of a ranch hand. "Supper is just ready, an' the women will be glad to see you."

Zen, walking with a limp, met them at the gate. Transley's eyes rea.s.sured him that he had not been led astray by any process of idealization; Zen was all his mind had been picturing her. She was worth the effort. Indeed, a strange sensation of tenderness suffused him as he walked by her side to the door, supporting her a little with his hand.

There they were ushered in by the rancher's wife, and Zen herself showed Transley to a cool room where were white towels and soft water from the river and quiet and restful furnishings. Transley congratulated himself that he could hardly hope to be better received.

After supper he had a social drink with Y.D., and then the two sat on the veranda and smoked and discussed business. Transley found Y.D. more liberal in the adjustment than he had expected. He had not yet realized to what an extent he had won the old rancher's confidence, and Y.D. was a man who, when his confidence had been won, never haggled over details.

He was willing to compromise the loss on the operations on the South Y.D. on a scale that was not merely just, but generous.

This settled, Transley proceeded to interest Y.D. in the work in which he was now engaged. He drew a picture of activities in the little metropolis such as stirred the rancher's incredulity.

"Well, well," Y.D. would say. "Transley, I've known that little hole for about thirty years, an' never seen it was any good excep' to get drunk in.... I've seen more things there than is down in the books."

"You wouldn't know the change that has come about in a few months," said Transley, with enthusiasm. "Double shifts working by electric light, Y.D! What do you think of that? Men with rolls of money that would choke a cow sleeping out in tents because they can't get a roof over them.

Why, man, I didn't have to hunt a job there; the job hunted me. I could have had a dozen jobs at my own price if I could have handled them. It's just as if prosperity was a river which had been trickling through that town for thirty years, and all of a sudden the dam up in the foothills gives away and down she comes with a rush. Lots which sold a year ago for a hundred dollars are selling now for five hundred--sometimes more.

Old ranchers living on the bald-headed a few years ago find themselves today the owners of city property worth millions, and are dressing uncomfortably, in keeping with their wealth, or vainly trying to drink up the surplus. So far sense and brains has had nothing to do with it, Y.D., absolutely nothing. It has been fool luck. But the brains are coming in now, and the brains will get the money, in the long run."

Transley paused and lit another cigar. Y.D. rolled his in his lips, reflectively.

"I mind some doin's in that burg," he said, as though the memory of them was of greater importance than all that might be happening now.

Transley switched back to business. "We ought to be in on it, Y.D.,"

he said. "Not on the fly-by-night stuff; I don't mean that. But I could take twice the contracts if I had twice the outfit."

Y.D. brought his chair down on to all four legs and removed his cigar.

"You mean we should hit her together?" he demanded.

"It would be a great compliment to me, if you had that confidence in me, and I'm sure it would make some good money for you."

"How'd you work it?"

"You have a bunch of horses running here on the ranch, eating their heads off. Many of them are broke, and the others would soon tame down with a sc.r.a.per behind them. Give them to me and let me put them to work.

I'd have to have equipment, too. Your name on the back of my note would get it, and you wouldn't actually have to put up a dollar. Then we'd make an inventory of what you put into the firm and what I put into it, and we'd divide the earnings in proportion."

"After payin' you a salary as manager, of course," suggested Y.D.

"That's immaterial. With a bigger outfit and more capital I can make so much more money out of the earnings that I don't care whether I get a salary or not. But I wouldn't figure on going on contracting all the time for other people. We might as well have the cream as the skimmed milk. This is the way it's done. We go to the owner of a block of lots somewhere where there's no building going on. He's anxious to start something, because as soon as building starts in that district the lots will sell for two or three times what they do now. We say to him, 'Give us every second lot in your block and we'll put a house on it.' In this way we get the lots for a trifle; perhaps for nothing. Then we build a lot of houses, more or less to the same plan. We put 'em up quick and cheap. We build 'em to sell, not to live in. Then we mortgage 'em for the last cent we can get. Then we put the price up to twice what the mortgage is and sell them as fast as we can build them, getting our equity out and leaving the purchasers to settle with the mortgage company. It's good for from thirty to forty per cent, profit, not per annum, but per transaction."

"It sounds interesting," said Y.D., "an' I suppose I might as well put my spare horses an' credit to work. I don't mind drivin' down with you to-morrow an' looking her over first hand."

This was all Transley had hoped for, and the talk turned to less material matters. After a while Zen joined them, and a little later Y.D.

left to attend to some business at the bunk-house.

"Your father and I may go into partnership, Zen," Transley said to her, when they were alone together. He explained in a general way the venture that was afoot.

"That will be very interesting," she agreed.

"Will you be interested?"

"Of course. I am interested in everything that Dad undertakes."

"And are you not--will you not be--just a little interested in the things that I undertake?"

She paused a moment before replying. The dusk had settled about them, and he could not see the contour of her face, but he knew that she had realized the significance of his question.