"If you want to know just how strong I'm in on this I'll tell you," he snapped. "I'm thirty-four years old. I've made my own living since I was fifteen. I've roughed it because I had to, and I've gone low enough at times. I've starved and blistered and frozen in places you never heard of; and out of it all I got together a little stake. I put that into Coldstream land. Do you think I'm going to let you take it without a fight? I'm not."
York, who never let go himself, drummed on his desk thoughtfully. This was a sentiment he understood and appreciated. A fighter, he recognized a kindred spirit. Also if this man were influential, as appeared likely, among the Coldstream ranchers, it might be well to make terms with him.
"You haven't a chance," he said. "I'll be quite frank with you. We have the best legal advice, and our position is quite unassailable. Even if it were not, we could appeal you into bankruptcy. Still, though I don't admit that you have the least claim on us, we might possibly buy in your holdings at a fair present price."
"That's freeze-out," Dunne returned bluntly. "You force us to sell, and afterward you include our lands in your ditch system, and clean up a thousand per cent. It won't do. We proved that country, and we want that profit ourselves."
"I'm making the offer to you alone," said York. "I don't care about the others. We don't want their land."
"Then why are you trying to make a deal with me?" rasped Casey Dunne. "You think I'll go home and tell my neighbours that they have no show at all to buck the railway, and the best thing we all can do is to sell out for what we can get—and then I keep my mouth shut on the fact that I'm getting more than the rest of them."
"Nothing of the sort," snapped York, who did not like to hear his thought done into plain English. "My offer was made in good faith, but I withdraw it. Keep your land."
"And the devil do me good with it, I suppose!" said Casey Dunne, picking up his hat and rising. "Very well, Mr. York. I know now where you stand. And here's where we stand: Not one of us will sell an acre or a foot. We are going to keep our land, and we are going to keep our water—somehow."
"The best advice I can give you is to see a good lawyer," said York.
"I'll take the advice," Dunne replied. "But whether we take the lawyer's advice or not is another matter entirely."
"What do you mean by that?" York demanded.
"I mean," said Dunne, who had quite recovered his usual manner, which contained a spice of mockery that York found irritating, "that we're not very strong on law down where I come from. Some of us have got along pretty well with what law we carried around with us. Good morning, Mr. York."
CHAPTER III
Considerably more than a year after her experience with the train robbers, Clyde Burnaby received a dinner invitation from the Wades. Kitty Wade was an old friend; her husband, Harrison Wade, was a lawyer just coming into prominence. They had an unpretentious home on the North Side, and such entertaining as they did was on a modest scale. Nevertheless, one met there people worth while, coming people, most of them, seldom those who had "arrived" in the French signification of the word—young professional and business men, authors, playwrights, and politicians in embryo—comparatively unknown as yet, but who, in a few months or a few years, might be famous.
"Oh, Clyde," said Kitty Wade, as Clyde, having removed her wraps, was arranging her hair before the mirror, "I had planned to have Van Cromer take you in to dinner, but at the last moment he couldn't come, and Stella Blake couldn't come either. I had a Mr. Casey Dunne for her. And so, if you don't mind——"
"Of course not," said Clyde. "But post me a little, Kitty. What has Mr. Casey Dunne done, or what is he going to do? What does one talk about to him?"
"Crops," replied Mrs. Wade.
Clyde sighed resignedly. "My dear, I don't mind for once, but I never could understand the market. May wheat, September options, war and rumours of wars, and the effect on prices of the weather sent by divine Providence, probabilities of a large or short crop—these be sealed mysteries to me."
"But Mr. Dunne isn't a broker," said Mrs. Wade. "He's a farmer."
"A—a farmer!" Clyde repeated, in much the same tone she would have used if her hostess had informed her that she was to be paired with a Zulu.
Mrs. Wade laughed. "Not the 'Old Homestead' kind, dear. It's the fault of my Eastern bringing up. I should have said a 'rancher.' He comes from somewhere near the Rockies, and I believe he grows wheat and hay and cattle and—oh, whatever else ranchers grow."
"Oh!" said Clyde doubtfully. "And is he excessively Western? Does he exude the 'God's-own-country' and 'land-of-opportunity' line of conversation? Will he try to sell me land? And how old is he?"
"I have never seen him," Mrs. Wade replied. "He did Harrison a good turn once—gave him some information about lands or something. Harry assures me that he doesn't wear big revolvers or spurs, or eat with his knife—in fact, he is quite presentable. But if you like I'll give you some one else."
"Oh, no," said Clyde. "Mr. Dunne will do very well. I think I shall prefer him to a broker."
"So good of you, dear," smiled Kitty Wade. "Shall we go down? I think the others will be arriving."
Clyde endeavoured to construct an advance portrait of Casey Dunne, but without much success. Unconsciously she was influenced by the characters of alleged Western drama, as flamboyant and nearly as accurate as the Southerners of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." She was genuinely surprised when she found him to be a rather good-looking young man in irreproachable evening clothes.
At that moment dinner was announced. He offered his arm without hesitation. Clyde intercepted a glance from her hostess, brimming with laughter. She laughed back with relief. She had rather dreaded the experience of a dinner companion who would be guilty of all manner of solecisms. Clearly her fears had been groundless. Save in the matter of tan, which was rather becoming, Wade's Western friend differed in no outward detail from the other men in the room.
When they were seated came the embarrassing moment—when it became necessary to find a conversational topic of common acquaintance. But this passed easily. From the table decorations Clyde turned deftly to flowers in general, to trees, to outdoor things. Casey Dunne laughed gently.
"You are trying to talk of things I am expected to know about, aren't you, Miss Burnaby?"
She evaded the charge, laughing also. "What shall we talk about, Mr. Dunne? You shall choose for both of us."
"No, I won't do that. Talk of whatever interests you. I'll follow your lead if I can."
She took him at his word, finding that his acquaintance with current literature and topics of the day was rather more intimate than her own. He seemed to have ideas and opinions formed by his own thought, not mere repetitions of reviews or newspaper comment.
As she glanced at his profile from time to time she became aware of an odd familiarity. He resembled some one she had seen before, but the identity eluded her. Their conversation gradually took a more personal form. Dunne told a story, and told it well. He spoke casually of the West, but instituted no comparisons.
"You are really an exception," Clyde told him. "The average Westerner is such a superior mortal. He looks down on the East, and when he comes among Easterners he condescends."
"It's a relief to have some one admit that Chicago is in the East," he laughed. "No, I don't brag about the West. It's a good country, and it will be better when we have approximated more to Eastern conditions. We are undeveloped as yet. In twenty years——"
"Ah, there it is!" she interrupted. "Scratch a Russian, and find a Tartar. And I took you for an