"Don't do anything to prejudice your case in the courts," Wade warned.
"According to you York will do that, anyway," said Dunne. "No, Wade, that's flat, final, whatever. We won't let go till we have to. We won't be skinned out of the profit we are entitled to by foresight and hard work. Speaking for myself, I've put my whole stack on this bet, and with a straight deal it's a sure winner. And if the deal's going to be crooked I'll break up the game any way that comes handy."
"Go to it, my friend," said the lawyer. "It's your affair. I've told you what I think, and I'll not add to it. I hope you have water when I come out this summer to make you that long-promised visitation." He changed the subject abruptly. "You and Clyde Burnaby seemed to be getting on swimmingly."
"Clyde—is that her name?" said Dunne. "Seems like a nice girl."
"She's all of that. You know who she is, of course?"
"Not a bit. Just her name."
"Niece of old Jim Hess, with a fortune of her own."
"Pretty lucky," Dunne commented.
"Pretty and lucky," said his host. "Old York hates Hess like poison, a sentiment which Hess returns, according to rumour. I don't suppose you've told Clyde Burnaby your troubles?"
Dunne stared at him. "Of course not! What do you take me for?"
"That's all right, my son; don't swell up so. Why don't you tell her?"
"Why the deuce should I? Do you think I go yawping my business affairs to every female I meet?"
"Well, Clyde Burnaby's good stuff," said Wade. "She has a level head. If it comes up that way, Casey, tell her all about it. She'll sympathize with you."
"I'm not looking for sympathy."
"And she might give you some good advice."
"Rats!" Casey Dunne commented, inelegantly but forcibly, and Wade said no more.
Dunne was glad when the cigars were ended. He found Clyde Burnaby at the piano, barely touching the keys. A faint melody seemed to flow from her finger's tips.
"Do you sing, Mr. Dunne?"
"Only very confidentially. When I was riding for a cow outfit I used to sing at night, when the cattle were bedded down. Sort of tradition of the business that it kept 'em quiet. They didn't seem to mind my voice. And that's really the most encouragement I ever got."
Mrs. Wade asked Clyde to play. She complied at once, without hesitation. They applauded her. Afterward one of the men sang, to her accompaniment. Then she and Dunne drifted together once more.
"I liked your playing," he said, "but not what you played. It had no tune."
"It was Beethoven!"
"All the same, it had no tune. I like the old songs—the ones I can follow in my mind with the words I know."
"Why, so do I," she admitted; "but, my Philistine friend, I was expected to play the other kind."
"I understand that. But I like to hear what is low grade enough for me to appreciate. I don't get much music at home."
"Tell me about your ranch. I'd like to know what you do and how you live. To begin with, beggin' yer honour's pardon in advance, is there a Mrs. Dunne?"
"No such luck," he replied. He sketched the ranch routine briefly. She was interested, asking many questions. The evening wore away. The guests began to depart. But Clyde had arranged to stay the night with the Wades.
"By the way," she said, "I still have your ten-dollar bill. I will send it to you."
"Don't do that. Keep it."
"I couldn't."
"Of course you can. You may pay me interest if you like."
"At what per cent?"
"Current rates in my country—eight."
"Very well," she laughed. "It's a bargain. But where is your security?"
He considered gravely. "Certainly I should have something. I will be satisfied with that rose you are wearing."
Clyde coloured slightly, glancing at him swiftly.
"Kitty," she called to Mrs. Wade, "I want you as a witness. Mr. Dunne has made me a loan. His security is this rose—and nothing more. Please witness that I give it to him."
And later that night Kitty Wade said to her lord:
"For a rancher, Harry, your Casey Dunne has class. I never knew Clyde Burnaby to give a flower to any man before."
"And you see a case of love at first sight," said Wade, scornfully and sleepily. "Pshaw, Kitty, you're barking at a knot. Casey's a fine chap, but Lord! she's got too much money for him. Suppose she did give him a rose! Didn't she call you over to chaperon the transaction? That puts the sentimental theory out of business."
"And that's all a lawyer knows!" said his wife. "Why, you old silly, don't you see that she couldn't have given it to him any other way—with all those people in the room? Clyde Burnaby can think about as fast as anybody I know."
CHAPTER IV
Casey Dunne pulled a fretful buckskin to a halt as he topped a rise and looked down on Talapus Ranch. It lay before him, the thousand-odd acres of it, lush and green beneath the sloping, afternoon sun, an oasis in a setting of brown, baked earth and short, dry grasses which seldom felt the magic of the rains. The ranch was owned by Donald McCrae, a pioneer of the district, and it was the show place of the country. It was Exhibit A to incomers, a witness to the results of irrigation. The broad, fat acres were almost level. There was no waste land, no coulées, no barren hills to discount its value. Every foot of it could be irrigated, and most of it was actually irrigated and cultivated.
Dunne's eye followed the lines of the ditches, marked by margins of green willows. They cut through the fields of wheat, of oats, of alfalfa, timothy, and red clover. They were the main arteries. From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life—the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. At that distance, in the clear, dry air, they looked like toys, miniatures, sharply defined in angle and shadow. So, too, the stock grazing in the fields were of lilliputian dimensions.
From where he sat in the saddle Dunne could see the Coldstream, scarcely more than a large creek, dignified in that land of dryness by the name of river, whose source was in the great green glaciers and everlasting snows of the hills. Its banks were green with willow and cottonwood. It was a treasure stream of untold value. With it the land prospered; without it the land and the men who peopled the land must fail.
"And that ranch, and others like it," Dunne muttered through his teeth, "must go dry and back to brown prairie unless the owners sell out to that old holdup, York, at his own price. Well, Mr. York——You yellow devil!"
The last words did not refer to Cromwell York. For, without provocation or preliminaries, the buckskin's head had dived between his legs, his back arched like an indignant