She paused a moment, as though in hesitation.  Conniston waited in silence for her to go on.

“Father is sending you to the Valley because he has begun to take an interest in you.  Before the year is over there is going to be an opportunity for every man there to show what there is in him.  He is giving you your chance, your chance to make good!”

Argyl got to her feet and stood looking away from him, out across the duck pond.  Presently she turned to him again, smiling, her voice gone from grave to gay.

“The race is on, isn’t it?  The great handicap!  And, anyway, I have given you a tip, haven’t I?  Now you are coming up to the house with me, and I’m going to make you a bandage for your broken hand.”

She didn’t stop to heed his protest, but ran ahead of him to the house.  And Conniston, pondering on many things, saw nothing for it but to allow her to play nurse to him.

Saturday morning Greek Conniston pocketed the first money he had ever earned by good, hard work.  Brayley handed him three ten-dollar gold pieces—­his month’s wage.  Conniston asked for some change, and for one of the gold pieces received ten silver dollars.  He knew that Mr. Crawford and Argyl had gone into Crawfordsville, so he gave one dollar to Brayley, saying:  “Will you hand that to Mr. Crawford for me?  I owe it to him for telegraph service on the first day I spent here.”  And then he made a little roll of the indispensable articles from his suit-case, tied it to the strings behind his saddle, and rode away across the fields toward Rattlesnake Valley.

He was to report immediately at the office of the reclamation work in Valley City.  Following the trail he and Argyl had taken the other day, he rode into the depression, or sink, about the middle of that long, low hollow between the southern end and the clutter of uniform square buildings which was planned to grow into a thriving town in the heart of the desert.

Every foot of ground here now had a new personal interest for him.  He studied the long, flat sweep of level land with nodding approval, trying to see just where the main canal should run, just how its course could be shaped most rapidly, most cheaply, most advantageously.  For the mounds, the ridges where the winds had swept the sand into long winnows, he had a quick frown.  After all, he realized suddenly, this desert was not the flat, even floor he had imagined it to be.  A mile, two miles to his right as he rode into the “valley” he could see a slow-moving mass of men and horses, could catch the glint of the sun upon jerking scrapers and plows.  There the front ranks of Mr. Crawford’s little army was pushing the war against the desert.  There was where the brunt of Bat Truxton’s responsibility lay.