You are a humane man, Champers," Carey declared. "I think I've hated you,
too, a good many years. These gray hairs of ours ought to make us better
behaved now. But, even if you do let Smith run, that 'blind tiger' of
Wyker's must go out of business. I'll start John Jacobs after that hole
one of these days. He holds the balance of power on public sentiment out
here. He'll clear it out. His hatred of saloons is like Smith's hatred of
Shirley, only it's a righteous indignation. I've heard John's father was a
drunkard and his mother followed her husband into a saloon in Cincinnati
to persuade him out and was killed by a drunken tough. Anyhow, John will
break up that game of Wyker's one of these times. See if he doesn't."

Darley Champers slowly shifted his huge frame into an easier posture as he
replied:

"Yes, he can do it all right. But mark me, now, the day he runs Hans Wyker
out of that doggery business it will be good-by to John Jacobs. You see if
it isn't. I wouldn't start him after it too quick."

Darley Champers spent two weeks with his physician, and the many friends
of Dr. Carey smiled and agreed with Todd Stewart, who declared:

"Carey would win Satan to be his fast friend if the Old Scratch would only
let Carey doctor him once."

But nobody understood how the awakening of the latent manhood in Darley
Champers and his determination to protect an orphan girl were winning the
doctor to him as well.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PURPLE NOTCHES

Two things greater than all things are.
One is Love, and the other War.
And since we know not how War may prove,
Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love.
--The Ballad of the King's Jest.

The summer ran its hot length of days, but it was a gay season for the
second generation in the Grass River Valley. Nor drouth nor heat can much
annoy when the heart beats young. September would see the first scattering
of the happy company for the winter. The last grand rally for the crowd
came late in August. Two hayrack loads of young folks, with some few in
carriages, were to spend the day at "The Cottonwoods," a far-away picnic
ground toward the three headlands of the southwest. Few of the company had
ever visited the place. Distances are deceiving on the prairies and better
picnic grounds lay nearer to Grass River.

On the afternoon before the picnic Leigh Shirley took her work to the lawn
b