“Then, why do you distress yourself?  You have played a losing game for four years, cut your fingers on those same wheels of justice.  Quit it, Wayland!  What good does it do?  Come over to the right side and build up big industries, big development!  I’ve watched you fighting for four years, Wayland!  You are the squarest, pluckiest fighter I’ve ever known.  But you can’t do a thing!  You can’t get anywhere!  You’re wasting the best years of your life mouthing up here in the Mountains at the moon; and who of all the public you are fighting for, my boy, who of all the public gives one damn for right or wrong?  If we turn you down, who is going to raise a finger for you?  Answer that my boy!  They are paying you poorer wages now than we pay any ignorant foreigner down in the Smelter; that’s a way the dear people have of caring for their ownest!  Chuck it, Wayland!  Chuck it!  Waken up, man; look out for number one; and, in the words of the illustrious Vanderbilticus, let the public be d—­ee—­d!  Come down to my ranch where you’ll have a chance to carry out your fine ideas of Range and Forest!  Hell, what are you gaining here, man?  A sort o’ moral hysterics—­that’s all!  It’s all very well for those Down Easterners, who have lots of money and are keen on the lime light, to go spouting all over the country about running the Government the way you’d run a Sunday School.”  The Senator had become so tense that he had raised his voice.  “Chuck those damfool theories, Wayland!  Chuck them, I tell you!  Get down to business, man!  What are you howling about timber for posterity for?  If you don’t look alive, you’ll go lean frying fat for posterity!  Oh, rot, the thing makes me so tired I can’t talk about it!  Come down to my ranch.  I want a thorough man!  I want a man who can fight like the devil if he has to and handle that gang in the cow camp with branding irons!  I want ’em run out, do you hear?  They’re blackguards!  I want a man that’s a man; and, for pay, you can name your own price.  I’ll want a partner as I grow older.  And don’t you do any fool rash thing that I’ll have to fight and down you for!  I like you, Wayland—­”

Then three things happened instantaneously.  Wayland glanced up.  Eleanor MacDonald was looking straight into his eyes.  And the sheep rancher’s choppy voice was saying to the Missionary, “Some men go up in the mountains to fish for trout; but others stay right down in the Valley and grow rich catching suckers.”

“We can’t cross that gully,” shouted the boy.  “We, can’t cross it nohow!  We got to cross the ranch trail to go up to them Rim Rocks.”