your holdings at a fair present price."

"That's freeze-out," Dunne returned bluntly. "You force us to sell, and
afterward you include our lands in your ditch system, and clean up a
thousand per cent. It won't do. We proved that country, and we want
that profit ourselves."

"I'm making the offer to you alone," said York. "I don't care about the
others. We don't want their land."

"Then why are you trying to make a deal with me?" rasped Casey Dunne.
"You think I'll go home and tell my neighbours that they have no show
at all to buck the railway, and the best thing we all can do is to sell
out for what we can get--and then I keep my mouth shut on the fact that
I'm getting more than the rest of them."

"Nothing of the sort," snapped York, who did not like to hear his
thought done into plain English. "My offer was made in good faith, but
I withdraw it. Keep your land."

"And the devil do me good with it, I suppose!" said Casey Dunne,
picking up his hat and rising. "Very well, Mr. York. I know now where
you stand. And here's where we stand: Not one of us will sell an acre
or a foot. We are going to keep our land, and we are going to keep our
water--somehow."

"The best advice I can give you is to see a good lawyer," said York.

"I'll take the advice," Dunne replied. "But whether we take the
lawyer's advice or not is another matter entirely."

"What do you mean by that?" York demanded.

"I mean," said Dunne, who had quite recovered his usual manner, which
contained a spice of mockery that York found irritating, "that we're
not very strong on law down where I come from. Some of us have got
along pretty well with what law we carried around with us. Good
morning, Mr. York."

CHAPTER III

Considerably more than a year after her experience with the train
robbers, Clyde Burnaby received a dinner invitation from the Wades.
Kitty Wade was an old friend; her husband, Harrison Wade, was a lawyer
just coming into prominence. They had an unpretentious home on the
North Side, and such entertaining as they did was on a modest scale.
Nevertheless, one met there people worth while, coming people, most of
them, seldom those who had "arrived" in the French signification of the
word--young professional and business men, authors, playwrights, and
politicians in embryo--comparatively unknown as yet, but who, in a few
months or a few years, might be famous.

"Oh, Clyde," said Kitty Wade, as Clyde, having removed her wraps, w