The next morning Justin rode over to the ranch house to see Lucy. He desired to know how she felt about his sudden elevation, by which Ben had been thrust down. Near the crossing, where the bare boughs of the cottonwoods were tossing in the autumn wind, he encountered Philip Davison. The ranchman drew rein. Justin had a sense of uneasiness, as he lifted his hat respectfully to his former employer.

“Justin,” Davison spoke sharply, “we want to know how you stand. I heard from that meeting last night, and from what you said there nobody can tell. Fogg says you’re all right, but I’d like to hear you say so.”

Davison disliked circumlocution, being as direct in his methods as Justin himself. He had yielded reluctantly to the restraining hand of Fogg. Now, meeting Justin thus, he formulated his doubt and his question. His florid face had taken on added color and his blue eyes began to flash. Except for that sudden fire he looked tired, and older than Justin had ever seen him.

“Speak up, speak up!” he commanded testily, as Justin hesitated. “For myself I want to know just what to expect. Are you with us, or against us? You can’t be both.”

Justin did not want to speak up, for he did not want to break with Philip Davison. He still held for him much of the strong admiration he had cherished in his youth.

“Having been elected without my knowledge or wish, I shall go to Denver untrammeled,” he said, still hesitating. “How I shall vote will depend upon the questions that come up for settlement.”

“That’s a fool’s answer,” Davison declared. “Are you against the range, or are you for it? Will you support the interests of the cattlemen, or the interests of the farmers?”

His words flushed his face still more and made his eyes very bright. There were fleshy pads under those blue eyes, and the cheeks below the pads looked flabby. Justin thought of Ben. In some respects the father and the son were alike. Yet Ben was smaller, had a weak face, and little of the towering bulk of his father, who was as tall as Justin himself. And thoughts of Ben, humiliated by defeat, of Lucy, together with the old regard, made him oblivious to the harsh words and harsher tones. Yet evasion was not possible.

“I don’t think I ought to be called on to declare myself before I know just what the issues are and in what shape they will be presented,” he urged. “But you know my sentiments, Mr. Davison. You know I quit the ranch not because I did not wish to work for you, but simply because I——”

“Because you were a fool; because the work of branding a bawling calf made you sick at the stomach; because you couldn’t stand it to see a starving cow wandering about in a blizzard with nothing to eat! You think—”

“Mr. Davison—”

“You think the cattle business is cruel and brutal, and—”

“I think cattle raising as it is conducted on the open range is cruel. I can’t help that.”

“And you think the farmers are the only people! You think the cattlemen are—”

“I sympathize with the farmers. Perhaps that is because they are poor men and need sympathy.”

“You will vote with them!” Davison lifted his voice and shook his finger in Justin’s face, leaning forward in the saddle. “After all I’ve done for you, Justin! There is a contemptible conspiracy on foot in this state to ruin the cattle business, and it has your sympathy. I have always been your friend, and Fogg is your friend; yet you’d vote us into poverty to-morrow, just on account of Clayton’s idiotic notions. I’m done with you. You needn’t ride on over to the house, for I don’t want you there. There is no one there who does want you. I hope you understand that. A man who is a man doesn’t go where he isn’t wanted. I wash my hands of you!”

Having lost his temper, Philip Davison began to rave.

“Yet you owe your election to ranch influences,” he shouted. “You gained your place through the defection of the cowboys from Ben. They persisted in misunderstanding what he did at the time of the fire, and they played the sneak, riding over the country by night and banding themselves together to put him down. If you lent yourself to that, it—”

“I did not lend myself to it, Mr. Davison,” Justin protested, earnestly. “I did not know anything about it.”

“Yet you profit by it, you profit by it; and the receiver of stolen goods is as bad as the thief.”

Fogg had beheld this collocution from the ranch house, and now he galloped up, his fat body swaying heavily in his creaking saddle. Though perturbed, his round fat face beamed like a kindly sunset.

“How are you, Justin; how are you?” he cried. “Hope that racket at Clayton’s didn’t rob you of your sleep last night. It was a successful meeting, and I’m glad that it was, having had something to do with getting it up.” He mopped his hot forehead with his handkerchief. “Davison, a word with you! The Deep River Company write that they want to buy some of our cattle.”

Fogg’s hand was again on the wheel. Justin was glad to ride on, for Davison’s savage assault had left him breathless. He was hurt, but tried hard not to be angry. He was still determined to see Lucy, even though Davison’s words practically forbade him the house. Ben was absent so much from the ranch now that Justin hardly expected to meet him; yet he did meet him, in front of the ranch house door. Ben had long since discarded cowboy clothing, and he had lost much of the cowboy tan, his face being now white and unhealthy-looking, as if bleached by late hours and artificial lights. It took on a surly look, when he saw Justin.

“I shouldn’t think you’d care to come over here now,” he said, curtly. “If it’s pleasant for you, it isn’t pleasant for me.”

“I hope we can be friends,” Justin urged. “I’m sure I want to be yours.”

He had not recovered his equanimity, and his face was flushed.

“Well, I don’t want to be yours! You may deny it if you want to, but you played me a mean, dirty trick. You probably had it in mind, when you put up that melodramatic exhibition at the fire.”

Justin found great difficulty in keeping his temper. Hot words burned on his trembling lips.

“I won’t talk with you, Ben,” he declared, hoarsely. “Is Lucy in? I should like to see her.”

“Find out if she’s in,” Ben snapped, and turned toward the corrals.

Lucy met Justin at the door. Though she smiled in welcome, he could see that she was troubled.

“Don’t mind what Ben says,” she urged, as she took Justin’s hat and then led the way to the sitting room.

“He was crusty,” said Justin, “but I can’t blame him.”

Having gained the sitting room she turned to Justin, admiration in her troubled eyes.

“Justin, I ought to be proud of you, and I am—I can’t help being—but this is, in a way, very unfortunate and distressing. Ben wasn’t worthy of that place, as I know only too well, and as you know; but he is so very bitter over his defeat, and Uncle Philip is the same. Ben has been in a stubborn rage ever since the election, and has said some sharp things to me about it—as if I could help it, or had anything to do with it!”

“I’m sorry.” He took a chair. “I suppose I’ve lost Mr. Davison’s good-will entirely. When I met him a few minutes ago he forbade me the house. But I wanted to see you, and came on.”

“I suppose you will accept the position?”

“Can I do otherwise?”

“I shouldn’t want you to refuse it. The people chose you, over Ben, and even though it was unexpected, I suppose you ought to serve. Ben is alone responsible for his defeat. Uncle Philip will not believe the things which we know to be true, and he thinks Ben ought to have been elected. Yet I do hope,” she looked at Justin earnestly, “that you will not feel that you must vote against the cattlemen in everything, in the legislature?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Uncle Philip declares that you mean to.”

“It will depend, I fancy, upon the general action of the legislature—upon the measures and bills that may be introduced, and the candidates who are presented for senator. I don’t expect to take any active part against the ranchmen.”

“The farmers expect you to.”

“I’m opposed to the ranchmen on some points. You know how I feel; and of course I shall have to be guided by what I think is right. I don’t see how I can do anything else.”

“Uncle Philip says certain bills will come up, aimed at the free range; and he declares that if the free range is taken away or curtailed he will have to go out of business. He can’t fence against everybody.”

“On the other hand, what about the farmers?”

“There aren’t so very many of them, and their holdings are small. They might fence their land. The ranchmen were here first. You’ll remember that?”

“I’m not likely to forget it.” He settled back easily in his chair. “That’s been dinned in my ears a good deal, already.”

“It’s a serious matter,” she urged. “My sympathies are with the ranchmen; because I’m a ranch girl, I suppose, and have always lived on a ranch.”

“And it’s because I’ve seen so much of ranching that my sympathies are not with the ranchmen, aside from Mr. Davison himself. I should dislike to do anything to injure him, or displease him. But the ranching business, as it is now carried on, is, I fancy, the thing around which the fight in Denver will rage, if there is any fight. You know yourself, Lucy, that in a certain sense the ranchmen are lawbreakers. The trouble is, Mr. Davison doesn’t stand alone. It is not any one ranchman, but the system.”

“That’s why I’m disturbed by the situation.”

“A long time ago,” he said, seeming to change the subject, “you asked me to go to your uncle and put to him a certain momentous question. His answer was virtually a command that I should do something and become something. This opportunity has come, and it would be a weakness not to make the most of it. I shall trust that I won’t have to do anything to turn your uncle against me completely; but,” he regarded her earnestly, “I hope in any event nothing can ever come between you and me.”

He arose and stood beside her.

“Justin,” she said, looking up at him, “that does not need an answer; but I’m going to ask you not to be stubborn when you go to Denver, that is all. You do get unreasonably angry, sometimes, just like Uncle Philip; and when you do, you become stubborn. You don’t mind if I say this? If the struggle we fear comes, will you promise me not to permit yourself to get angry and stubborn about it? There will be many things said, I’ve no doubt, that will try you. But just think of me here, a ranch girl, and your best friends ranch people; the cowboys, who regard you so highly, didn’t vote for you because they were opposed to the ranchmen, but simply because they didn’t like Ben. You’ll remember these things, won’t you?”

He drew her to him.

“Lucy,” he said, as he put his arm about her and kissed her, “I shall be thinking of you all the time. I was almost afraid to come over here to-day, but I see I had nothing to fear.”

“And do you know why?”

“Because you love me even as I love you.”

“Then you won’t forget—you won’t forget—that I am a ranch girl, and that my interests, and yours too if you but knew it, are ranch interests!”

“I will not forget,” he promised.