there are many who will commercialize it. Let
them. We shall need their profits after the war to pay our debts. But
it's the thing that must be done. And you'll do it, won't you?"

"I'll do what ever needs to be done, Dave. I'd rather be by your side,
or as near as may be, but if you say that my duty lies back on the old
ranch I shall go back to the old ranch and raise food for my soldier.
And when it's all over we shall ride those old hillsides again. . . .
Up the canyon, you remember, Dave? The little niche in the wall of the
canyon, and all the silence and the sunlight? . . . Forever. . . ."

CHAPTER XXII

Any philosophy which accepts the principle that the great,
over-shadowing events of life are subject to an intelligent controlling
influence must of necessity grant that the same principle applies to
the most commonplace and every-day experiences. It is impossible to
believe that the World War, for example, has a definite place in the
eternal scheme of the universe without believing the same of the
apparently most trivial incident in the life of Kaiser Wilhelm, Lloyd
George, or Woodrow Wilson, or, for that matter, of the humblest soldier
in the ranks. The course of the greatest stream of events may well be
deflected by incidents so commonplace as to quite escape the notice of
the casual observer.

Some such thought as this comforted me--or, at least, would have
comforted me, had I thought it--when a leaking gasoline tank left me,
literally as well as figuratively, high and dry in the foothills. The
sun of an August afternoon blazed its glory from a cloudless sky; far
across the shimmering hills copper-colored patches of ripening wheat
stood out ruddy and glowing like twentieth century armour on the brown
breast of the prairie; low in a valley to the left a ribbon of
silver-green mountain water threaded its way through fringes of spruce
and cottonwood, while on the uplands beyond sleek steers drowsed in the
sunshine, and far to the westward the Rockies slept unconcerned in
their draperies of afternoon purple. All these scenes the eye took in
without enthusiasm, almost without approval; and then fell on the
whitewashed ranch buildings almost in the shadow underneath. And in
these days a ranch--almost any ranch--means gasoline.

I soon was at the door. The walls had been recently white-washed;
there were new shingles of red cedar on the roof; flowers bloomed by
the path that led down to the co