tirely competent people. He consented to wait around a while.
Eudora slipped away into the house while they were talking; Simpson went presently to the gate to take a survey of things. The road was empty; the broad landscape did not reveal a living soul. Ellison's ranch was miles from any other habitation, although homesteaders were edging up along its borders. Its own extent was so vast as to hold them in a manner isolated.
An alluring spread of land, thought Simpson; a land of fertility and rich agricultural promise. How much more profitable to turn it over to the plowman instead of the cowboy, whose contributions to society were so evanescent and insecure. What romance there was in it, lying there with its fecund breast to the sky, waiting the furrow and the sower. It was a land that seemed to offer the fulfillment of the heart's desire.
Just so, said he; when a man's desire was to leave off his roaming way of aimless seeking and make a home with elm trees beside it and broad chimneys at its lowgabled ends. He was not greatly concerned over the man who had fallen before his gun in the muddy road. No doubt the fellow was dead, which was just as well. He was not the kind that coroners' inquests were concerned with in the cattle country.
Confounded ugly fellow he was, as Mrs. Ellison had said, and a cunning rogue, as well. Think of him making that virtuous pretense of being a sheriff's man, and convicting himself for a rascal at once by taking the plunder and allowing the supposed thief to go to the
