e ranch. And now that I am here I
intend to stay. I have always been eager to live in the West."

"Then you don't like Gary Warden?"

The girl's face sobered. "I like him. That is all."

Lawler's eyes were still grave. "Miss Wharton," he said slowly; "do you
know what Gary Warden is doing--what the company with which your father
is connected, is doing?"

"Yes," said the girl, frankly; "they--all of them--are trying to control
the western cattle market." She looked straight at him, with no sign of
embarrassment.

"That is business, isn't it? It is what men are beginning to call 'big
business.' It means centralization of power, resources--and a number of
things that go with it. It is an admirable scheme--don't you think? It
eliminates uncertainty, risk of loss. It means the stabilizing of the
cattle industry; it means gigantic profits to the men who have brains
big enough to control it."

Lawler smiled. "Also, Miss Wharton, it means the complete subjection of
the cattle raiser. It means that competition will be stifled; that the
cattle owner will be compelled to take what prices the buyers offer. It
means that the incentive to raise cattle will be destroyed. It means the
end of the open market--which has always been a spur to industry. It is
evil."

The girl laughed. "How tragic!" she mocked. "One would think we were
facing a cataclysm, whereas business men are merely just beginning to
take advantage of some of the opportunities that are everywhere around
them. It is all perfectly legal, isn't it? I have heard my father say
that it is."

Lawler's smile grew slightly bitter. He saw that the girl's mind was
merely skipping over the surface of the commercial sea upon which her
father sailed a pirate craft; she had not plunged into the depths where
she might have found the basic principles of all business--fairness; she
had taken no account of the human impulse that, in just men, impels them
to grant to their fellows a fighting chance to win.

Watching her closely, Lawler saw in her the signs of frivolity and
vanity that he had failed to see that day when he had met her in
Willets. Her attitude now revealed her as plainly as though he had known
her all her days. She comprehended none of life's big problems; the
relations of men to one another had not compelled her attention; the
fine, deep impulses of sympathy had not touched her. She was selfish,
self-centered, light, inconsequential--a woman who danced from under