on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for its
favor. The ancestor was all Jack's.

Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he
watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire
detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in
the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence
of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the
luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme
satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun.

"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!"

"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident
ring of Jack's tone.

"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than
Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by
morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the
range trail. Then you will be quite safe."

"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous.

"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that
a bargain?" Jack asked.

"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--its
millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed.

"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old
humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would
give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both
his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might
have saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom."

"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added
bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the
prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another.

"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked.

"I--I--"

"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly.

"Yes!" Prather admitted.

"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will be
the first legal step in undoing what you have done?"

"Yes."

While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on his
own account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happiness
of one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father:

"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before yo