Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full glare of the Southwestern sun.  She looked about her and felt an unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle and under some watchful eye.  “Dad,” said she, quietly, “I’m not going home.  I’m going to spend a month at Sky Top.”

“Has it caught you, ma’am?” asked Tom Osby, simply.

“She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be taken care of,” grumbled her father.

“Oh, now, interests ain’t exclusive for the States,” said Tom Osby.  “You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn’t do it.  Give the girl a month, an’ she’ll just about have the town—­or her and me together will.  You settin’ there talkin’ about goin’ home!  Go on home if you feel like it.  Me and Miss Constance will stay out here, and take care of the business interests ourselves.”

“We’re personally conducted, dad,” laughed Constance.

“Listen,” said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon his knee.  “Now, you folks has got money behind you that’s painful.  You don’t have to steal, Mr. Ellsworth.  It’s only a habit with you.  Now s’pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin’ that God can plat a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin’ that the first fellers that finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones—­which she does allow, and know.  Now, here’s what she says.  Says she, ’We’ll go in with this outfit, and we won’t try to steal the landscape.  We’ll pay for every foot of ground that’s claimed by anybody that seen it first.  We won’t try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates back to Jack Wilson.  We’ll put in the yard at the lower end of the town, provided that Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, gives his permission—­always admittin’ there may be just as good places for Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he feels like goin’ there.  Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot.”

“Of course,” assented Constance; and her father nodded.

“That’d be fair, and it’d be easy,” went on Tom.  “We’ll fix it up that-a-way, me and Miss Constance—­not you.  And as soon as we get to a telegraft office, we fire the general counsel, Mr. Barkley; don’t we, Miss Constance?” The girl nodded grimly.

“He’s fired,” said Tom.  “You can take care of that the first thing you do, Mr. Ellsworth.  Then you can make out my papers as yardmaster and general boss of the deepot.  You can be clerk.

“Now here we go, the railroad cars a choo-chooin’ up our canon, same as down here at Sky Top.  In the front car is the president, which is Miss Constance, with me clost along, the new yardmaster.  Your pa is somewhere back on the train, Miss Constance, with the money to pay off the hands.  He’s useful, but not inderspensible.”