ss that's so," said McCrae. "It's a bad fix any way you look at
it. There's the ranch. That ain't so much, far's I'm concerned. I've
been broke before, and I can rustle for myself for years yet. But
there's my wife and Sheila and Alec. It's theirs. I worked for them.
It's all I've got to leave them. You see, Casey, I can't stand to lose
it."

"I know," said Casey sympathetically. "It's a hard position. Look here,
Donald, if you wish it I'll vote for breaking our pool, and each man
doing the best he can for himself."

"No, I didn't mean that," said McCrae. "The railway wouldn't give us a
fair price, and nobody else would buy with this hanging over. I'll
stick. But you, now, it's some different with you. You're young, you
ain't married. It's your stake, of course, but then you've got time
left you to get another. They offered to buy you out. I don't know but
you'd best take their offer. That'll give you something to start on.
None of us will think the less of you for it."

"The agreement was that we were to fight this to a finish. If we sold
out the railway was to buy all or none. If you can stay with that I
can."

"But then, you see, Casey----"

"I see, Donald. You know me better than that."

McCrae slapped him on the shoulder with a huge hand, and his voice took
on the Gaelic accent of his childhood learned from his father, that
McCrae who had in his time ruled a thousand miles of wilderness for the
great fur company.

"I do know ye, boy, and it is proud I will be of it. There's Sheila at
the door, callin' us. A toss of liquor and a bite--it will put the
heart in us again. We must cheer up for the women, lad."

But in spite of this resolution supper was not a merry meal. Talk was
spasmodic, interrupted by long silences. Mrs. McCrae--slight, gentle,
motherly, with wavy silver hair--was plainly worried. Her husband
brooded unconsciously over his plate. Sheila and Casey, conversing on
topics which neither was thinking about, blundered ridiculously. And
the son of the house, Alec McCrae, a wiry, hawk-faced young man of
twenty-two, strongly resembling his sister, was almost silent.

Soon after supper the ranchers who had banded together for mutual
protection began to arrive by saddle and buckboard. Men of all ages,
they comprised a dozen descents and nationalities, the Celtic and
Anglo-Saxon strains predominating.

There was Oscar Swanson, heavy, slow-moving, blond as Harold Haarfagar,
a veritable Scandinavian c