in his
accounts of the blooming of his desert rose. He announced that it
already had six hundred inhabitants. Another, calmer witness
estimated fifty. The truth was probably a hundred, including the
fly-by-nights. Unquestionably, they made noise enough for six hundred.

The Marquis, pending the completion of his house, was living
sumptuously in his private car, somewhat, it was rumored, to the
annoyance of his father-in-law, who was said to see no connection
between the rough life of a ranchman, in which the Marquis appeared to
exult, and the palace on wheels in which he made his abode. But he was
never snobbish. He had a friendly word for whoever drifted into his
office, next to the company store, and generally "something for the
snake-bite," as he called it, that was enough to bring benedictions to
the lips of a cowpuncher whose dependence for stimulants was on Bill
Williams's "Forty-Mile Red-Eye." To the men who worked for him he was
extraordinarily generous, and he was without vindictiveness toward
those who, since the killing of Luffsey, had openly or tacitly opposed
him. He had a grudge against Gregor Lang,[7] whose aversion to titles
and all that went with them had not remained unexpressed during the
year that had intervened since that fatal June 26th, but if he held
any rancor toward Merrifield or the Ferrises, he did not reveal it. He
was learning a great deal incidentally.

[Footnote 7: "He held the grudge all right, and it may
have been largely because father sided against him in
regard to the killing. But I think the main reason was
because father refused to take any hand in bringing
about a consolidation of interests. Pender was a
tremendously rich man and had the ear of some of the
richest men in England, such as the Duke of Sutherland
and the Marquis of Tweeddale."--_Lincoln Lang._]

Shortly before Roosevelt's arrival from the Chicago convention, the
Marquis had stopped at the Maltese Cross one day for a chat with
Sylvane. He was dilating on his projects, "spreading himself" on his
dreams, but in his glowing vision of the future, he turned, for once,
a momentary glance of calm analysis on the past.

"If I had known a year ago what I know now," he said rather sadly,
"Riley Luffsey would never have been killed."

It was constantly being said of the Marquis that he was self-willed
and incapab