while retaining the
full possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity,
he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle at
once. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power with
anyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares of
company partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fall
heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield,
Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not
deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack's
eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous
gratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all?
Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Gradually
the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the
hard-tempered, paternal steel.

"You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you know
the life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store,"
Jack began.

"Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on the
subjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store!

The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as the
expression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was to
him an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being in
overflow and the force of his personality, which the father had felt
uncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in its
radiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening and
volcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desert
to his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides;
of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard in
the silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of the
trail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong.

"Afraid?" queried his father.

"Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw Little
Rivers for the first time."

He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and the
story of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, now
seeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story.
The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with his
coffee-spoon, made no comment.

"And that first night I saw tha