and talk about and put off than any man Steering
had ever known. One day, not so very long after old Bernique's find in
Choke Gulch, word had gone over Canaan like an eagle's scream that ore
had been struck in the Canaan Tigmores. Old Bernique had wrung his
hands, and Steering had gone grimly back to a little up-river shack, at
Redbud, below Sowfoot Crossing, where he was spending a great deal of
his time these later days.

As the winter broke, Madeira's ability to seize the pivotal point on
which to turn theory into practice wrought so surely and so swiftly as
to be inexplicable to anyone unaware of the fever that drove him on. His
first face of ore had cut blind, but he only put two more drills to
work, and in the early spring one of the drills struck ore again, a
small face, but ore. They had not found the big lode yet, but every
indication was that much to the good. The _Canaan Call_ became so
jubilant over the second find that even the sulkers lost sight of the
fact that the find was on entailed property. Confidence in Madeira went
to high pitch, a supreme tension that a touch might snap.

All Canaan was waking up in these days, all Tigmore County was nervous.
Town and county were in a pleased, tortured, ante-boom consciousness
that, first thing you know, there would be a new Canaan. Some new
streets were laid out; a number of people bought chenille portieres; and
though Crittenton Madeira quietly drew his money out of the Grange, for
other and weightier uses, the Grange secured new capital elsewhere and
flourished mightily. For farmers from We-all Prairie and Pewee and Big
Wheat Valley, cotton raisers from the "Upper Bottom" and corn and cattle
men from the "Lower Bottom" came into Canaan "to trade," and filled the
aisles of the Grange, gossiping, getting information about the ore
developments, then crossing swiftly and determinedly to Madeira's bank
to leave their money with the president of the Canaan Mining and
Development Company.

Out at his house, in his office, in the garden, on horseback, on foot,
Madeira kept his daughter Sally near him. He watched his daughter almost
constantly, just for the satisfaction of seeing her. As the girl went
about her household duties, or walked in the garden with her long,
supple stride, or rode the high-tempered horses from the stable, or
drove with him, the fine glow on her face, her magnificent health and
honesty and strength radiating from her, she was, for Madeira, a