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She strove to review all the possibilities which the great Obar Ranch could offer for disaster. And her mind drifted back over years to a memory that gave her not a shadow of comfort. The last button of her gloves had been secured when the refolding of the letter came. Jeff deliberately, but abstractedly, returned it to its cover. His smile was scarcely a happy one when he finally looked up.
Nan paused in the act of sipping her coffee. Her eyes were full of incredulity. "I don't understand, Daddy," she said frankly. "We owe more to Jeff than ever. Much more. He came pretty near handing over his poor life so the Obar might prosper. He cleared out that gang who would have done the Obar to death. A man can't give more to his friends." Bud remained unconvinced.
For all his regard for his partner he could not allow Nan her absurd self-effacement without protest. None knew better than he the extent of his debt to Jeff for ridding the Obar of the rustlers. But Jeff, he also knew, owed his life to the devotion, the skill, the love of this girl upon whom he had no claim.
I intend to act as right as I can by you. This is your home. You must use it, if you feel that way. The Obar has to go on. It's your means of living. It's my means of living. Then there are others concerned in it. For these reasons I shall carry on things, and your knowledge of this sort of work should hand you a reasonable share in the running of this place.
Chance runs me plumb into the camp of these rustlers who're cutting into your profits on the Obar. I come right in and hand you the story. You and Bud round up a bunch of boys and I take you to where the camp's hidden. You hold 'em up, and you hang them. Well, I guess the pleasantest moment of that racket for you would be to get back to home and hand me a bunch of dollars.
But anyways he's the big feller to-night, an' it's up to you to worry out so you can be a credit to him, an' me, an' the 'Obar." Then he came across to her and took her affectionately by the shoulders, and gazed down into her face with twinkling, kindly eyes. "Say, you got more to work on than most gals. You sure have, Nan. Yep.
But a distinct change had taken place in the method of these. Whereas, originally, they had been directed against not only the Obar Ranch, but wherever opportunity offered in the district, they now fastened their vampire clutches upon the Obar only, and, finally, on only one section of its territory: the land which belonged to Jeff's side of the partnership.
It was these which had shown him the possibilities of the now great Obar Ranch. It might have been claimed for him that he lacked many of the lovable weaknesses of human nature. It might have been said that he was hard, cold. Yet such was his passionate ambition beneath a cool, deliberate exterior that it would have been foolish to believe that his outward display was the real man.
Jeff had been talking of the Obar Ranch which was more precious to him than a schoolboy's first big achievement in the playing fields. He had been talking of it, not in the spirit of vain glory, but out of the deep affection of a strong heart for the child of his own creation.
It was Lal Hobhouse, second foreman of the Obar, the man who, before the amalgamation, was Jeff's foreman. Nan wondered what was bringing him in at this hour. Usually his visits to their headquarters were made in the evening when the work of the day was completed. The man rode up and found Nan interestedly waiting to receive him. There was a touch of anxiety in her tone as she greeted him.
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