to take the sick man back to Maine and see him comfortably
settled there. All this Mr. Wheeler explained to his family when
he called them up to the living room one hot, breathless night
after supper. Mrs. Wheeler, who seldom concerned herself with her
husband’s business affairs, asked absently why they bought more
land, when they already had so much they could not farm half of
it.
“Just like a woman, Evangeline, just like a woman!” Mr. Wheeler
replied indulgently. He was sitting in the full glare of the
acetylene lamp, his neckband open, his collar and tie on the
table beside him, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan. “You
might as well ask me why I want to make more money, when I
haven’t spent all I’ve got.”
He intended, he said, to put Ralph on the Colorado ranch and
“give the boy some responsibility.” Ralph would have the help of
Wested’s foreman, an old hand in the cattle business, who had
agreed to stay on under the new management. Mr. Wheeler assured
his wife that he wasn’t taking advantage of poor Wested; the
timber on the Maine place was really worth a good deal of money;
but because his father had always been so proud of his great pine
woods, he had never, he said, just felt like turning a sawmill
loose in them. Now he was trading a pleasant old farm that didn’t
bring in anything for a grama-grass ranch which ought to turn
over a profit of ten or twelve thousand dollars in good cattle
years, and wouldn’t lose much in bad ones. He expected to spend
about half his time out there with Ralph. “When I’m away,” he
remarked genially, “you and Mahailey won’t have so much to do.
You can devote yourselves to embroidery, so to speak.”
“If Ralph is to live in Colorado, and you are to be away from
home half of the time, I don’t see what is to become of this
place,” murmured Mrs. Wheeler, still in the dark.
“Not necessary for you to see, Evangeline,” her husband replied,
stretching his big frame until the rocking chair creaked under
him. “It will be Claude’s business to look after that.”
“Claude?” Mrs. Wheeler brushed a lock of hair back from her damp
forehead in vague alarm.
“Of course.” He looked with twinkling eyes at his son’s straight,
silent figure in the corner. “You’ve had about enough theology, I
presume? No ambition to be a preacher? This winter I mean to turn
the farm over to you and give you a chance to straighten things
out. You’ve been dissatisfied with the way the place is run for
some time, haven’t you? Go ahead and put new blood into it. New
ideas, if you want to; I’ve no objection. They’re expensive, but
let it go. You can fire Dan if you want, and get what help you
need.”
Claude felt as if a trap had been sprung on him. He shaded his
eyes with his hand. “I don’t think I’m competent to run the place
right,” he said unsteadily.
“Well, you don’t think I am either, Claude, so we’re up against
