method of Jeff's life was rapidity of thought and swift
execution supported by a perfect genius for clear thinking. It was
these characteristics which had lifted him so rapidly in the world of
cattle he had made his own. It was these which had shown him the
possibilities of the now great Obar Ranch.

It might have been claimed for him that he lacked many of the lovable
weaknesses of human nature. It might have been said that he was hard,
cold. Yet such was his passionate ambition beneath a cool, deliberate
exterior that it would have been foolish to believe that his outward
display was the real man. He was perhaps a powerfully controlled fire,
but the hot tide ran strong within him, and the right torch at the
right moment might easily stir the depths of him and bring their fiery
display to the surface.

Bud knew him. Bud understood something of the deep human tide flowing
through his strong veins. Once he had seen that tide at the surface,
and it had left an impression not easily forgettable. Nan, too, was
not without understanding of him. But hers was the understanding of
her sex for an idol she had set up in her heart. Her knowledge of his
shortcomings and his best characteristics was perhaps the reflection of
her feelings for him, feelings which make it possible for a woman to
endow any object of her profound regard with the virtues she would have
it possess. To her there was nothing of the iron, relentless,
purposeful soul about him. He was just "Honest Jeff," as she loved to
call him. A creature full of kindly thought for others as well as
strong in his own personal attitude toward life.

For himself Jeff knew nothing of the emotions lying dormant within him
until some chance happening stirred them from their slumbers and sent
them pulsating through his senses. He accepted the tide of life as he
found it, and only on his journey, swimming down its many currents, he
endeavored by skilful pilotship to avoid the shoals, and seek the
beneficent backwaters so that his muscles and courage might be
strengthened for the completion of the task he had still before him.

Elvine van Blooren had held the right torch at their first meeting
during the Cattle Week. One look into her beautiful eyes had set his
soul aflame, as all the years of his life spent in association with Nan
Tristram had failed to do. Did she only know it, the first waltz with
him at the subsequent ball had completely made her mistress of h