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Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone, seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.

Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-pronged goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort, for what came next.

Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how, largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.

At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them. Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve. If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he would be hurting her.

He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup, that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first, that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking, Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.

Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm, expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.

Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."

Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.

In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land, down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house. Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars?

Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!

Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from brimming ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!

That was true enough, and Shandon knew it. But there was that tremendous IF.

"It's all right, Ettinger. All but the water! And since the water is the whole thing, and I don't see where you're going to get it—"

"Wait a minute!" cried Ettinger, his eager hand clutching at Shandon's arm. "I tell you I'd a sold that ranch for twenty-five dollars an acre six months ago an' been damn' glad to git out at that. An' right now I could sell for a hundred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm damned if I do it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an' I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."

His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they could whip into line. And Wayne Shandon had the water!

Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.

"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"

In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme. Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the cañon of the upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream; it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for himself long ago.

Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for! He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive the grin from Ettinger's face.

"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll make millionaires out of us."

"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and brightening his eyes.

They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.

It was work which Nature might have planned when the mountains were carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet above the level of the water.

"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy, Shandon."

Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on, gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and forward to the windings of the cañon through which Dry Creek ran in winter and spring.

"It can be done," muttered Shandon slowly. "It can be done, Ettinger. I don't know what it will cost, five thousand or ten or twenty; but I do know that those lands down in Dry Valley are going to jump over the moon."

Ettinger made little clucking sounds with his mouth, his way of expressing joy unbounded.

"An' you don't see it all yet," he chuckled. "Lord, I've been layin' awake nights figgerin' on it. We'll bond everything that's loose in the valley. I've got Norfolk settin' tight and we'll round up a lot of the little fellers. It's sort of late, maybe, but them other fellers ain't got everything sewed up by a jugful."

"What other fellows?" asked Shandon, mystified.

Then Ettinger, in his rare good humour loosened his tongue until it poured out everything there was in his seething brain. He told of the scheme of Martin Leland and Sledge Hume, for Garth Conway had dropped an incautious word and the shrewd brain of Ettinger had worked out the puzzle. He told how the three men were trying to do this very thing, how they had planned on getting the water themselves, how Martin Leland had tied up thousands in options and purchases, how Ettinger had been one too many for them and had beat them to Shandon. He chuckled over everything, but most of all over the fact that Martin Leland had tried to buy him out. Old Leland was the keenest business man in the county, was he? Well, Ettinger had fooled him! Ettinger had blinded him with a promise to sell next week for seventy-five thousand. By that time, when Leland came to him—

"What's all this?" frowned Shandon. "You say that Leland, Conway and Hume are already at work, planning to put water from the Bar L-M into Dry Valley?"

"Already?" cried Ettinger. "They been clawin' at the job over a year now. The Lord knows what makes 'em so slow; think nobody else in the world can see straight, or shy on the money end, maybe. Anyhow they've gone to it tooth and toe nail; they've sunk thousands into it, thousands I tell you! An' now, you an' me, Shandon, can make the bunch of 'em eat out of our hands! They can't do nothin' without your water; that's where we got 'em."

Wayne Shandon's eyes grew bright with a vision, the muscles of his jaw hardened. In sober truth his opportunity had come to him. Hume, a man he hated, Leland, a man who had called him laggard, spendthrift, scoundrel, had put many thousands of dollars into a project which he could smash into pieces. Ettinger had said it: the two of them could make Leland and Hume eat out of their hands! They could get Norfolk and the little fellows; they could tear out the side of the ridge, release what waters they chose, make their ditches, and by improving only their own property make Leland's and Hume's holdings worth nothing. Leland had started it; Leland's unreasonable censure had been a challenge. Here was his answer!

It was business, straight business. Had Leland and Hume been his friends it would have been different. But they deserved no consideration from him. It was his water; he had the right to dispose of it as he saw fit. He would be treating Leland as fairly as he had been treated. Why had they not come to him in the first place? Why had they not offered him the opportunity to get in on the ground floor with them? He would have given them the water then, glad to see Wanda's father prospering. But they were holding out, they were waiting for something, they had made sure of his consent to let them have what they wanted. Why? When they had everything cornered they would offer him a small sum, they would believe him fool enough to leap at it, mouth open, like a fish. Even Garth Conway, his own cousin, had not told him! What consideration did Conway deserve?

"By Heaven!" cried Shandon.

And then he fell suddenly silent.

"We got to git busy in a hurry, Shandon," Ettinger ran on swiftly. "When old Sure-Thing Leland comes to me to close the deal I want to laugh at him."

Slowly the light died out of Shandon's eyes. Was this, after all, the opportunity for which he had yearned? He grew uncertain, a little troubled. An opportunity for what? For becoming worthy of Wanda, for being a man, square and just, a man who must make a new name for himself, a name which would never bring discredit to her when she became Wanda Shandon? In trying to ruin Sledge Hume for the sordid motives of hatred and gain, in trying to strike back at Wanda's father in vengeful bitterness, would he be doing a thing of which later he would be proud to have her know? Was he proving his manhood by accepting for his first business partner a man like Ettinger, who laughed over his feat of tricking another man by a lie? Was he not seeking to blind himself to the right and the wrong of it? This was the sort of thing that Sledge Hume would do; should Wayne Shandon do it? Was his first venture after the priceless gift of Wanda's love to him, to be a thing like this? Had this been the opportunity he had yearned for, to grasp gold full handed, to wreak vengeance, to retaliate against unfair treatment by striking back treacherously? Martin Leland had been unjust, yes. But had there not been strong human reasons for that injustice? Had not his own wild living been cause enough? Was he, from the sharp words of an old man who was jealous in his love for his daughter, to draw an excuse to strike at his own cousin and Wanda's father?

"Ettinger," he said quietly. "I can't do it. You had better keep your promise to Leland."

Ettinger's jaw dropped, his brows puckered in astonishment.

"What's the matter with you?" he demanded sharply. "Can't you see the play? We got the chance to git the water on the land and make them fellers pay for it or sell to us at our own figger, ain't we? Why, it's as good as gold, man! If you don't see enough in it as it stands you are in a place where you can hold 'em up for a bonus to boot."

Shandon turned away, Ettinger's point of view suddenly disgusting him. His golden opportunity had crumbled into dust and ashes. And although the little man by his side waxed voluble in alternating rage and supplication, Wayne Shandon's final word was a positive,

"No!"