"For you," interjected Hume.

"Yes, for me. But who knows that? People who paid any attention to the transaction came to understand that it had been because of Wayne Shandon's known shiftlessness that the property was allowed to be sold, they knew that Conway was his agent, and that Conway bought it in.

There is not a man living who knows anything about the matter who does not believe that Conway bought at Shandon's orders and with Shandon's money; and that the Bar L-M is Shandon's now and was never in any real danger from me. Is it likely then, that any man who believes this is, after this length of time, even going to think to mention the matter to Shandon?"

"You've got the chance to get by with it," said Hume slowly. "And it's a d.a.m.ned good chance."

"We all know the sort Shandon is," continued Leland. "I shall be surprised if he doesn't tire of the life here in six weeks, put through a sale of cattle, take the money and go again. With him away our chance becomes a certainty. In any case, I am going ahead with our work. I have had Garth look into the t.i.tle of the Dry Lands and he finds that it is perfect."

"Yes. The land is mine and is clear."

"All we need now is the water and we are going to have that in another nine months when I shall have a clear deed to the Bar L-M. Garth and myself have gone ahead as I told you that we would, taking options on every acre we could get in Dry Valley. Before many days we shall virtually control the whole of the valley, just the three of us.

Between us Garth and I have expended upwards of fifty thousand dollars in the last five weeks in options and out-right purchases."

"Let me see the papers," said Hume shortly.

Leland went to the safe and taking out a number of papers, handed them to Hume.

"All right as far as it goes," Hume said when at length he had finished his careful examination of the doc.u.ments and had tossed them to the table. "You haven't got the Norfolk place nor the Ettinger place.

What's the matter? They are more important to us than all the rest put together. Did they smell a rat?"

"I don't know. I am confident of closing with Norfolk in a few days, although I may have to pay him five dollars an acre more than I offered any one else. Ettinger is holding out for seventy-five thousand dollars, cash."

"Then he does smell a rat!" Hume's fist came crashing down upon the mantelpiece. "By G.o.d, somebody's been talking too much!"

"Mr. Hume," Leland reminded him sternly, "may I call to your attention the fact that n.o.body knows a thing about this matter excepting yourself, Garth and me? I haven't so much as told my wife--"

"You?" cried Hume hotly. "Who said that you had? You've got brains enough to hold your tongue. That's why I came to you in the first place. But Conway here--"

He swung suddenly upon Garth, his eyes flaming, his face distorted with wrath. Before either of the two men had guessed his purpose he strode swiftly across the room, and gripping Conway's shoulders with his two big hands jerked him to his feet.

"Conway," he snarled, his face close to the others, his eyes burning, his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your infernal gab and I'll--"

He broke off sharply, flinging Conway backward from him so that the smaller man's body crashed against the wall.

"Hume!" cried Leland angrily. "I'll have no quarrelling in my house.

If you can't act--"

"I haven't come here to-day for a love feast," sneered Hume, already forgetting Conway as he whirled upon Martin. "What I've got to say I'll say my way whether you and your cursed white rat like it or not.

I say that somebody has been talking too d.a.m.ned much! That place of Ettinger's as it is, without the water, isn't worth twenty-five thousand. He'd have sold it for that a month ago and glad of the chance to unload. Now he holds out for seventy-five thousand! What's the answer? You've dragged Conway into this thing; I haven't. I wanted no man in it but you and Arthur Shandon and myself. You because you had the money, Arthur Shandon because he had the lake and the river. I didn't want Conway. He's your pet, not mine. Now, muzzle him if you can."

Garth's angry retort, the first word he had said since Hume sprang unexpectedly upon him, was lost in the low rumble of Martin Leland's heavy voice.

"You've said what you wanted to say, Mr. Hume. We've heard it. We understand each other. I can vouch for Conway's discretion. If you are as careful yourself we are all right. I'll attend to both Ettinger and Norfolk. I shall also see that at the end of the nine months the Bar L-M is mine and that we have the water for Dry Valley."

Hume laughed. Without again looking toward Conway he stooped, picked up the gauntlets he had let fall, and turned to the door.

"You are n.o.body's fool, Leland," he said patronisingly. "You are taking a chance in freezing Red Shandon out but the law can't go after you. And you stand to win a wad of money."

"Mr. Hume," interposed Leland sternly. "I am not taking over the Bar L-M because there happens to be money in it. I am simply using the weapon of retribution which G.o.d has seen fit to put into my hands--"

"Oh, rot!" grunted Hume sneeringly. "Don't come trying to square your conscience with me. I say, go to it, if you can get across with it."

He jerked the door open and then stopped suddenly his hand still on the k.n.o.b.

"If you do slip up," he said bluntly, "if Red Shandon does hear about it and gets busy, let me know. If he starts making trouble I can put him where he'll be out of the way!"

The door closed loudly behind him.

CHAPTER X

SHANDON'S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone, seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.

Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-p.r.o.nged goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort, for what came next.

Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how, largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.

At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them.

Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve.

If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he would be hurting her.

He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup, that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first, that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking, Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.

Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog.

He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm, expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.

Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."

Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.

In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land, down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house.

Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars?

Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!

Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from br.i.m.m.i.n.g ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!

That was true enough, and Shandon knew it. But there was that tremendous IF.

"It's all right, Ettinger. All but the water! And since the water is the whole thing, and I don't see where you're going to get it--"

"Wait a minute!" cried Ettinger, his eager hand clutching at Shandon's arm. "I tell you I'd a sold that ranch for twenty-five dollars an acre six months ago an' been d.a.m.n' glad to git out at that. An' right now I could sell for a hundred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm d.a.m.ned if I do it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an'

I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."

His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they could whip into line. _And Wayne Shandon had the water!_