CHAPTER X
"THE FORCE ISN'T A NURSERY"
The mystery of the people of the world; the strangeness of the many lives about him had always consoled Dick in other days for the troubles that fell on him. It was his nature to keep himself busy, bodily and mentally; and when he came back to the old daily routine at Grey Wolf and passed the empty house across the Lake in his patrols he found the value of the work-habit which he had taught himself. Work was the only leash which could hold his temper just now, and he needed all that life could give him. Day and night the district saw him prowling through it; stalking faint trails of wrong-doers, examining into the state of roads and crops and bridges, hearing petty details of complaint and squabble in that alert silence which promised swift redress, and exercising prisoners with a bland mercilessness which made men fear to come under the harrow of his power.
Tempest went his own way these days. Since Dick's rebuke to him the old friendship seemed to have slid off the two, and each man walked his daily round, king in his own right of jurisdiction, and neither giving nor asking sympathy or understanding. Trouble dulled Tempest's energies; it quickened Dick's. And no love of woman nor of himself could blurr the sharp edge of his calculating mind. Before he went to Edmonton he had discovered that flattery, gross, daring flattery was the simplest way in which to manage Grange's Andree. To the heat of it she would open the doors of her heart while Tempest's gentle and reverent prayers only irritated or amused her.
Dick's clear mind had grasped this salient fact fully, and with Jennifer's face sweet and grave-eyed in his mind, he began to make private sketches and bold outlines of Andree; planning his attack with restless eagerness, and bringing at last to Moosta a strongly-finished girl-head
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