shed, all the land she could see in the valley was hers, and all
the living creatures in the fields. It seemed perfectly natural,
because since childhood even the distant mountains and their snows had
been Dicksie's.

CHAPTER VI

THE FINAL APPEAL

Sinclair's discharge was a matter of comment for the whole country,
from the ranch-houses to the ranges. For a time Sinclair himself
refused utterly to believe that McCloud could keep him off the
division. His determination to get back led him to carry his appeal to
the highest quarters, to Glover and to Bucks himself. But Sinclair,
able as he was, had passed the limit of endurance and had long been
marked for an accounting. He had been a railroad man to whom the West
spelled license, and, while a valuable man, had long been a source of
demoralization to the forces of the division. In the railroad life
clearly defined plans are often too deeply laid to fathom, and it was
impossible for even so acute a man as Sinclair to realize that he was
not the victim of an accident, but that he must look to his own record
for the real explanation of his undoing. He was not the only man to
suffer in the shake-out that took place under the new superintendent;
but he seemed the only one unable to realize that Bucks, patient and
long-suffering, had put McCloud into the mountain saddle expressly to
deal with cases such as his. In the West sympathy is quick but not
always discerning. Medicine Bend took Sinclair's grievance as its own.
No other man in the service had Sinclair's following, and within a
week petitions were being circulated through the town not asking
merely but calling for his reinstatement. The sporting element of the
community to a man were behind Sinclair because he was a sport; the
range men were with him because his growing ranch on the Frenchman
made him one of them; his own men were with him because he was a
far-seeing pirate and divided liberally. Among the railroad men, too,
he had much sympathy. Sinclair had always been lavish with presents;
brides were remembered by Sinclair, and babies were not forgotten. He
could sit up all night with a railroad man that had been hurt, and he
could play poker all night with one that was not afraid of getting
hurt. In his way, he was a division autocrat, whose vices were
varnished by virtues such as these. His hold on the people was so
strong that they could not believe the company would not reinstate
him. In spite of the ap