ay for the lease, and the rest I'll
use on the Swaim land, not on mine. I'm going to go beyond the blowout
to begin, and work north the same way it goes," Joe explained.

"All of which sounds pretty crazy to me. You are shouldering a big load,
young man--a regular wildcat venture. There's one of you to myriads of
sand-heaps. You'll have to take the Lord Almighty into partnership to
work a miracle before you win out. I've known the Sage Brush since the
first settler stuck in a plow, and I've never known one single miracle
yet," York admonished him.

"As to miracles," Joe replied, "they are an every-day occurrence on the
Sage Brush, if you can only look far enough above money-loaning to see
them, you Shylock."

Calling York Macpherson a Shylock was standard humor on the Sage Brush,
he was so notoriously everybody's friend and helper.

"And I've had to take the Lord in for a partner all my life," Joe added,
seriously.

York looked at the stern face and stalwart form of the big, sturdy
fellow before him, recalling, as he did so, the young ranchman's years
of struggle through his boyhood and young manhood.

"Of course you can win," he assured Joe. "Your kind doesn't know what
failure means. It isn't the _work_, it is the stake that makes me
uneasy."

Joe looked up quickly and York knew that he understood.

"I read your page clearly enough, my boy," he said, earnestly. "You are
taking a hand in a big game, and the other fellow keeps his cards under
the table. Blowouts are not as uncertain as women, Joe. Let me tell you
something. You will find it out, anyhow. I can ease the thing up now.
Back in Philadelphia a rich old widow has given two young lovers the
opportunity to earn their living or depend on her bounty--a generous
one, too. Being childless and selfish, she secretly wanted to hold them
dependent on her, that she may demand their love and esteem. It is an
old mistake that childless wealth and selfishness often make. The girl,
being temperamentally romantic and inherently stubborn, voted to go
alone. These things, rather than any particularly noble motive--I hate
to disillusion you, Joe, but I must hold to facts--have landed her
practically penniless in our midst; and she is not acquainted yet with
either lack of means or the labor of earning. The young man, gifted in
himself, which his sweet-heart is not, son of a visionary spendthrift,
has chosen the easier way, a small clerkship and a luxurious home
seeming