ram loved the place. For her, full of the dreams of youth,
Calthorpe was the hub of all that suggested life and gaiety. It was
the one city she knew. It was the holiday resort of the girl born and
bred to the arduous, and sometimes monotonous life of the plains.

But it was, in reality, a place of even greater significance. Nan saw
it only as it appealed to her ardent fancy. But Calthorpe was a
flourishing and buoyant city of "live" people, who were fully aware of
its favorable possibilities as the centre of the richest agricultural
region in the whole of the State of Montana.

It was overflowing with prosperity. The ranching community, and the
rich grain growers for miles around, poured their wealth into it, and
sought its light-hearted life for the amusement of their families and
themselves. Its social life was the life of the country, and to take
part in it needed the qualification of many acres, or much stock, a
bank balance that required no careful scrutiny, and a temperament
calculated to absorb readily the joy of living.

It was something of this joy of living which was stirring now, lighting
the girl's soft brown eyes with that tender whimsical smile which was
never very far from them. She was resting after the early excitements
of the day. It was her twenty-second birthday, and, in consequence,
with so devoted a father, a day of no small importance. She had been
warned by that solicitous parent to "go--an' have a sleep, so you don't
peter right out when the fun gets good an' plenty." But Nan had no use
for sleep just now. She had no use for anything that might rob her of
one moment of the delight and excitement of the Calthorpe Cattle Week,
as it was called. Therefore she undutifully abandoned herself to a
pleasurable review of events whilst waiting for the next act in the
day's play to begin.

And what a review it made in her understanding of the life about her.
It was four years since her father and Jeff Masters had signed their
partnership, and she knew that to-day, on the second day of _the_ week,
the triumph of the great "Obar" Ranch, which her father and Jeffrey
Masters had so laboriously and patiently built up, was to be completed.
Now, even while she sat there gazing from her window at the panorama of
life passing up and down the broad expanse of Maple Avenue, the Council
of the Western Union Cattle Breeders' Association was sitting for its
annual conference and election of officers. An