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He was finding progress so much easier than he had expected. It was evident that he had made a tremendous hit with Y.D.'s daughter. What a story to tell Linder! What would Transley say? He was shaking with excitement. "It's an awful hard life," he went on, "an' there comes a time, Miss, when a man wants to quit it. There comes a time when every decent man wants to settle down.
"I don't figure you're exactly serious, Dad, in your talk about Transley. You're just feeling out. Well let me do a little feeling out. How about Linder?" "Linder's all right," Y.D. replied. "Better than the average, I admit. But he's not the man Transley is. If he was, he wouldn't be workin' for Transley. You can't keep a man down, Zen, if he's got the goods in him.
"Dinner will be ready sharp on time twenty minutes late. Not being a married man, Grant, you will not understand that reckoning. You'll have to excuse Mrs. Transley a few minutes; she's holding down the accelerator in the kitchen. Come in; I want you to meet Squiggs." Squiggs proved to be a round man with huge round tortoise-shell glasses and round red face to match.
The mammoth shadows of the three people fell on the log walls, darting silently from position to position with their every movement. Her mother arose as Zen entered the room and took her hands in a warm, tender grip. "You're early leaving us," she said. "I'm not saying I object. I think Mr. Transley will make you a good husband. He is a man of energy, like your father. He will do well.
That difference in attitude toward the world and its affairs was a ridge which separated the whole current of their lives. It even, in a way, shut one from the view of the other; at least it shut Grant from the view of Transley. Transley would never understand Grant, but Grant might, and probably did, understand Transley. That was why Grant was the greater of the two....
Transley hit him from the shoulder. He crumpled up and collapsed. A mile and a half had been made safe, but the smoke was suffocatingly thick and the roar of the oncoming fire rose above the shouts of the fighters. Up galloped the water wagon; made a sharp lurch and turn, and a front wheel collapsed with the shock. The wagon went down at one corner and the barrels were dumped on the ground.
The desire of many young farmers to enlist had also afforded an opportunity to acquire their holdings for small considerations, and Transley had proved his patriotism by facilitating the ambitions of as many men in this position as came to his attention.
A wife and children he regarded as desirable appendages for declining years for the quiet and shade of that evening toward which every active man looks with such irrational confidence. But for the heat of the day for the climb up the hill they would be unnecessary encumbrances. Transley always took a practical view of these matters.
She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the matter quite out of her hands. And yet she could not bring herself to feel resentment toward him; that was the strangest part of it. It seemed that she had come under his domination; that she even had to think as he would have her think.
The nucleus of the house was the log cabin where Y.D. and his wife had lived in their first married years. With the passage of time additions had been built to every side which offered a point of contact, but the log cabin still remained the family centre, and into it Transley and Linder were immediately admitted.
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