Edith had gone to visit a girl friend in the country; would be away for
some time. Dave felt a foolish annoyance that she should have left
town. She might at least have called him up. Why should she call him
up? Of course not. Still, the town was very empty. He drove with
Mrs. Duncan in the afternoon, and at night took a long walk by the
river. He had a vague but oppressive sense of loneliness. He had not
realized what part of his life these Sunday afternoons with Edith had
come to be. He had no man friends; his nature held him apart from his
own sex. And yet he had a strange capacity for making friends quickly,
if he tried. But he didn't try. He didn't feel the need. But he felt
lost without Edith.

A few days later Conward strolled in, with the inevitable cigarette.
He smoked in silence until Dave completed a story.

"Good stuff you're giving us," he commented, when the article was
finished. "Mighty good stuff."

"Your tip put me on to a good lead all right," Dave acknowledged. "And
now _The Times_ is chasing me hard. They had a story this morning that
the ---- railway is buying a right-of-way up the river."

"Remember what I told you the other day? Stories start from nowhere.
It's just like putting a match to tinder. Now we're off."

Conward smoked a few minutes in silence, but Dave could not fail to see
the excitement under his calm exterior. He had, as he said, decided to
"sit in" in the biggest game ever played. The intoxication of sudden
wealth had already fired his blood.

He slipped a bill to Dave. "For your services in that little
transaction," he explained.

Elden held the bill in his fingers, gingerly, as though it might carry
infection, as in very truth it did. He realized that he stood at a
turning point--that everything the future held for him might rest on
his present decision. There remained in him not a little of the fine,
stern honour of the ranchmen of the open range; an honour curious,
sometimes terrible, in its interpretation of right and wrong, but a
fine, stern honour none the less. And he instinctively felt that to
accept this money would compromise him forever more. And yet--others
did it. He had no doubt of that. Conward would laugh at such
scruples. And Conward had more friends than he had. Everybody liked
Conward. It seemed to Dave that he, only, distrusted him. But that,
also, as Dave said to himself, lay in the point of view. He granted
that he had