"No, we'll all walk."

The procession had started toward the town when Jack felt something soft poking him in the small of the back and looked around to find that the cause was P.D.'s muzzle. Wrath of G.o.d and Jag Ear might go with Firio, but P.D. proposed to follow Jack.

"And after I have ridden you thousands of miles and you've heard all my songs over and over! Well, well, P.D., you are a subtle flatterer! Come along!" Then he turned to Jim Galway: "Has John Prather arrived?"

"Yes, last night."

"He is here now?" Jack put in quickly.

"No; he pulled out at dawn on his way to Agua Fria."

"Oh!" Jack was plainly disappointed. "He has the grant for the water rights?"

"Yes," said Jim, "though he hasn't made the fact public. He does everything in his smooth, quiet fashion, with a long head, and I suppose he hasn't things just right yet to spring his surprise. But there is no disputing the fact--he has us!"

One man henceforth was in control of the water. His power over the desert community would be equivalent to control of the rains in a humid locality.

"You see," Jim continued, "old man Lefferts' partners had really never sold out to him; so his transfer to the Doge wasn't legal. He turned his papers over to Prather, giving Prather full power to act for him in securing the partners' surrender of their claims and straighten out everything with the Territory and get a bonafide concession. That is as I understand it, for the whole business has been done in an underhand way.

Prather represented to the Doge that he was acting entirely in the interests of the community and his only charge would be the costs. The Doge quite believed in Prather's single-mindedness and public spirit.

Well, with the use of money and all the influences he could command, including the kind that Pete Leddy exercises, he got the concession and in his name. It was very smart work. I suppose it was due to the crafty way he could direct the Doge to do his wishes that the Doge happened to be off the scene at the critical stage of the negotiations. When he went to New York all that remained was for him to obtain the capital for his scheme. Lefferts and his partners had the underlying rights and the Doge the later rights, thanks to his improvements, and Prather has them both.

Well, Leddy and his crowd have been taking up plots right and left; that's their share in the exploitation. They're here, waiting for the announcement to be made and--well, the water users' a.s.sociation is still in charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word."

"And you have no plans?" Jack asked.

"None."

"And the Doge?"

"None. What can the old man do? Though n.o.body exactly blames him, a good many aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has pa.s.sed beyond him. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out with John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came.

You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybody is against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in the world and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and take orders, Jack."

"Yes, ready to fight at the drop of the hat, seh, or to sit still on our doorsteps with our tongues in our cheeks and doing the wives' mending, as you say!" declared Bob Worther. "It's right up to you!"

"You are all of the same opinion?" asked Jack.

They were, with one voice, which was not vociferous. For theirs was that significantly quiet mood of an American crowd when easy-going good nature turns to steel. Their partisanship in pioneerdom had not been with six-shooters, but with the ethics of the Doge; and such men when aroused do not precede action with threats.

"All right!" said Jack.

There was a rustle and an exchange of satisfied glances and a chorus of approval like an indrawing of breath.

"First, I will see the Doge," Jack added; "and then I shall go to the house."

Galway, Dr. Patterson, Worther, and three or four others went on with him toward the Ewold bungalow. They were halted on the way by Pete Leddy, Ropey Smith, and a dozen followers, who appeared from a side street and stopped across Jack's path, every one of them with a certain slouching aggressiveness and staring hard at him. Pete and Ropey still kept faith with their pledge to Jack in the _arroyo_. They were without guns, but their companions were armed in defiance of the local ordinance which had been established for Jack's protection.

"Howdy do, Leddy?" said Jack, as amiably as if there had never been anything but the pleasantest of relations between them.

"Getting polite, eh! Where's your pretty whistle?" Leddy answered.

"I put it in storage in New York," Jack said laughing; then, with a sudden change to seriousness: "Leddy, is it true that you and John Prather have got the water rights to this town?"

"None of your d----d business!" Leddy rapped out. "The only business I've got with you has been waiting for some time, and you can have it your way out in the _arroyo_ where we had it before, right now!"

"As I said, Pete, I put the whistle in storage and I have already apologized for the way I used it," returned Jack. "I can't accommodate you in the _arroyo_ again. I have other things to attend to."

"Then the first time you get outside the limits of this town you will have to play my way--a man's way!"

"I hope not, Pete!"

"Naturally you hope so, for you know I will get you, you--"

"Careful!" Jack interrupted. "You'd better leave that out until we are both armed. Or, if you will not, why, we both have weapons that nature gave us. Do you prefer that way?" and Jack's weight had shifted to the ball of his foot.

Plainly this was not to Pete's taste.

"I don't want to bruise you. I mean to make a clean hole through you!"

he answered.

"That is both courteous and merciful; and you are very insistent, Leddy,"

Jack returned, and walked on.

"Just as sweet as honey, just as cool as ice, and just as sunny as June!" whispered Bob Worther to the man next him.

Again Jack was before the opening in the Ewold hedge, with its glimpse of the s.p.a.cious living-room. The big ivory paper-cutter lay in its accustomed place on the broad top of the Florentine table. In line with it on the wall was a photograph of Abbey's mural in the Pennsylvania capitol and through the open window a photograph of a Puvis de Chavannes was visible. Evidently the Doge had already hung some of the reproductions of masterpieces which he had brought from New York. But no one was on the porch or in the living-room; the house was silent. As Jack started across the cement bridge he was halted by a laugh from his companions. He found that P.D. was taking no risks of losing his master again; he was going right on into the Doge's, too. Jim took charge of him, receiving in return a glance from the pony that positively reeked of malice.

Again Jack was on his way around the Doge's bungalow on the journey he had made so many times in the growing ardor of the love that had mastered his senses. The quiet of the garden seemed a part of the pervasive stillness that stretched away to the pa.s.s from the broad path of the palms under the blazonry of the sun. As he proceeded he heard the crunching of gravel under a heavy tread. The Doge was pacing back and forth in the cross path, fighting despair with the forced vigor of his steps, while Mary was seated watching him. As the Doge wheeled to face Jack at the sound of his approach, it was not in surprise, but rather in preparedness for the expected appearance of another character in a drama. This was also Mary's att.i.tude. They had heard of his coming and they received his call with a trace of fatalistic curiosity. The Doge suddenly dropped on a bench, as if overcome by the weariness and depression of spirits that he had been defying; but there was something unyielding and indomitable in Mary's aspect.

"Well, Sir Chaps, welcome!" said the Doge. "We still have a seat in the shade for you. Will you sit down?"

But Jack remained standing, as if what he had to say would be soon said.

"I have come back and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his announcement.

"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension.

"Yes, my future is out here, now."

"You give up the store--the millions--your inheritance!" cried the Doge, still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of this idea to worldly credulity.

"Quite!"

There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, your life, out here?"

The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing.

"Yes!"

"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, in all the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. in the drawing-room.