h her to Rattlesnake Valley. Out of
the dozens of men who worked under Brayley's orders he was absolutely
the only one who could be spared from the day's work! Every other man
had a quicker eye, a stronger body, a firmer hand; every other man was
a better rider, a better herder, a better roper, a better all-round
man. When there was work that must be done, man's work, he was the one
who could be spared from it.

By nature headlong, when Greek Conniston went into a thing he was in
the habit of going deep into it. When he drove a new car he drove it
night and day and at top speed. When he spent money he spent lavishly,
generously, recklessly. When he wasted time he wasted it profligately.
And now that he abandoned an old position he did it as thoroughly as
he had dissipated his father's money. He was plunging from what had so
long seemed to him a great height. Plunging; not cautiously lowering
himself inch by inch down a dizzy precipice of self-respect, not
looking the while for the first ledge upon which he might rest;
plunging headlong from the zenith of self-conceit to the nadir of
self-contempt. And the depths into which he hurled himself seemed to
him very deep, very black.

He ignored considerations by the way. That he had been handicapped in
the race did not suggest itself to him to comfort him. He merely saw
that the race was on and that he was far in the rear, choked with the
dust of the going. He saw, and saw clearly, that of all the men who
took their dollar a day from John Crawford he, Greek Conniston, did
the least to earn his. That he was not only not the best man on the
range, but that he was the poorest man. He was just his father's son.
_A man's son, not a man!_

He had not eaten supper, had forgotten that he had not eaten. Long he
sat in the thickening night, alone, feeling the part of a man marooned
by his dawning understanding upon a desert island, vast, impassable,
restless seas between him and his race. He watched the stars come out
until they were thick set in the black vault above him, flung in
sprays, flashing and scintillating down to the low horizons about him.
His brooding eyes ran out across the floor of the plain toward
Rattlesnake Valley.

He remembered that he had promised to call to see Argyl to-morrow
night, to tell her then what he had decided. What was he going to
decide? The obvious thing was not clear to him yet. He would work over
it half the night. Out of the confusion into whi