r down
beside him again. "With your permission, which I was going to ask
immediately after breakfast, Colonel Craigmiles, we two are one," he
said, with the frank, boyish smile that even his critics found hard to
resist. "Will you so regard us?"

The colonel's answering laugh had no hint of obstacles in it.

"It was merely a little matteh of business," he explained. "Will youh
shot-up arm sanction a day's travel, Mistuh Ballard?"

"Surely. This sling is wholly Miss Elsa's idea and invention. I don't
need it."

"Well, then; heah's the programme: Afteh breakfast, Otto will drive you
oveh to Alta Vista in the light car. From there you will take the train
to Denver. When you arrive, you will find the tree of the Arcadia
Company pretty well shaken by the news of the catastrophe to the dam. Am
I safe in assuming so much?"

"More than safe: every stockholder in the outfit will be ducking to
cover."

"Ve'y good. Quietly, then, and without much--ah--ostentation, as youh
own good sense would dictate, you will pick up, in youh name or mine, a
safe majority of the stock. Do I make myself cleah?"

"Perfectly, so far."

"Then you will come back to Arcadia, reorganise youh force--you and
Mistuh Bromley--and build you anotheh dam; this time in the location
below the Elbow, where it should have been built befo'. Am I still
cleah?"

"Why, clear enough, certainly. But I thought--I've been given to
understand that you were fighting the irrigation scheme on its merits;
that you didn't want your kingdom of Arcadia turned into a farming
community. I don't blame you, you know."

The old cattle king's gaze went afar, through the gap to the foothills
and beyond to the billowing grass-lands of Arcadia Park, and the shrewd
old eyes lost something of their militant fire when he said:

"I reckon I was right selfish about that, in the beginning, Mistuh
Ballard. It's a mighty fine range, suh, and I was greedy for the
isolation--as some otheh men are greedy for money and the power it
brings. But this heah little girl of mine she went out into the world,
and came back to shame me, suh. Here was land and a living, independence
and happiness, for hundreds of the world's po' strugglers, and I was
making a cattle paschuh of it! Right then and thah was bo'n the idea,
suh, of making a sure-enough kingdom of Arcadia, and it was my laying of
the foundations that attracted Mr. Pelham and his money-hungry crowd."

"Your idea!" ejaculated Ballard.