had written his letter without any thought of effect.
But the answer he got was so carefully worded that he could make nothing
of it. At the end of three non-committal pages she wrote:

"I ought not to wish you good luck, for Papa says if you have it it
will be your ruin. I did not suppose that circumstances could ruin
anybody,--anybody that had any backbone, I mean. But I do wish you
good luck all the same, and if you're the kind of person to be
ruined by it, why, I'm sorry for you!"

There was something in that letter, non-committal as it was, that gave
Wakefield the impression that a correspondence would be no furtherance
to his interests. He did not write again, and he only knew, from his
sister Fanny, that Dorothy was a greater favorite than ever that season;
a fact from which he could gather little encouragement. He had flung
himself like a piece of driftwood into the whirl of speculation; he had
lost more thousands than he cared to think about, the bulk of his
patrimony in fact, and his last chance was gone of making the fortune
that was to have been the winning of Dorothy. "It takes a man to do
that!" she had said.

Well, that was the end of it! As far as he was concerned, Dorothy Ray
had ceased to exist; the past had ceased to exist, the pleasant past,
with its deceitful mists and bewildering sunbeams. Things out here were
crude, but they were real! He got on his feet and turned about once
more. Between Mt. Washington and the range was a fertile ranch; broad
fields of vivid alfalfa, big barns, pastures dotted with cattle; a line
of light-green cottonwoods ran along the borders of the creek. What was
that about the wilderness blossoming like the rose? He turned again and
looked toward the barren hillocks. Even they, dead and inhospitable as
they appeared at a little distance, afforded nourishment for cactus and
painter's-brush, prickly poppy and hardy vetches. Dorothy Ray might do
as she pleased,--his fortune might go where it would! That need not be
the end of all things. Life, to be sure, might seem a little like a game
of chess after the loss of the Queen! Pretty tough work it was likely to
be to save the game, but none the less worth while for all that. He
wondered what his next move would be,--and meanwhile, before
recommencing the game, why not seize the most obvious outlet for his
newly roused energies, by tearing down the hill at a break-neck gallop
and clearing the wire fence