The
ranch grounds had been thoroughly policed, all the halting projects of
Matlock's regime had been spurred to finality, and cleanliness, method
and order had replaced the previous chaos and squalor of the C Bar.
Everything radiated the new manager's virility and energy. The renovated
ditches were glistening bank full with their life-giving floods; the
alfalfa and grain fields, now properly kept and irrigated, were billowy
seas of emerald fore-promise; everything betokened activity and thrift.
In three short months he had wrought wonders with the really excellent
material at hand and the C Bar was fast regaining its old-time prestige
as the best-ordered ranch west of the Divide.

Carter was openly enthusiastic over the wisdom of his choice of
managers, a wisdom which he shrewdly supplemented by giving Douglass
full sway in the conduct of affairs. At the latter's suggestion, he went
East in June to secure certain necessary machinery, and the letter
which had lain beneath her hammock the previous day was one written to
Grace by her brother announcing his intention to have their mother
accompany him on his return. The girl, interested by the novelty of her
new environment, had elected to remain on the ranch, laughingly
asserting that it was a precautionary measure in her brother's behalf,
as she was sure Douglass had designs on the picturesque old ranch house
and would tear down and rebuild it if not restrained by her presence.
The real truth was that she knew in his loyal respect for her he would
abstain from excesses in which he might be tempted to indulge in the
absence of that restraint. She was not quite sure of the moral fortitude
of this erratic young man, and even temporary interference with his work
was a contingency calamitous to the C Bar interests. Up to last night
she had felt only a great self-complacency over the result; but this
morning, toying with her usually much-relished berries and cream, she
was obsessed by the insistent thought that her self-congratulation was,
after all, a trifle premature. The longer she reflected, the more she
regretted that she had not gone back East with her brother. Not that she
was in the slightest degree apprehensive of any untoward futurity; it
was only that a new and unexpected factor had intruded itself into her
already perfected scheme for the restoration of her brother's
fortune--and the reclamation of Ken Douglass.

Women are usually creatures of one idea, and she wa