CHAPTER XXXII
CHETWOOD UNMASKED
As Angus drove homeward he was at first unable to adjust himself to actuality. He had given up all hope of retaining the ranch. The wrench of loss had been over. But now the ranch was his again, subject to the debt already existing, to keep if he chose.
But he realized that it would be folly to retain it as a ranch, to refuse a proposition which McGinity had just made amounting to a fifty-fifty partnership with the Airline in the project of a townsite. Again, no matter what his individual preference, he must think of others. In reality, his own individual interest in the ranch amounted to but one-third. Sooner or later there must be a division—an adjustment of shares between Jean, Turkey and himself. In justice to them he could not refuse an offer which promised more than he could ever hope to make or receive for the ranch as a ranch.
And so the ranch, as a ranch, was done. Its broad fields and pastures and broad stretches of timbered levels would be broken up, surveyed into building lots, pegged out with stakes, gridironed with embryonic streets. For a while it would lie raw, unsightly, ruined as a ranch, unmade as a town. And then people would come in. Shacks would spring up, stores with false fronts, all sorts of makeshifts which accompany construction days. Later would come permanence, better buildings, churches, schools, gardens, sidewalks. Where the Ranch had been would stand the Town. It was Progress, the history of the West since the first steel road adventured among the ancient buffalo trails. The old order was changing, but he, though young, was more of the old order than the new, because he had been bred in the former.
Faith touched his arm lightly.
"Tell me I'm awake. It seems like a dream."
He put his arm around her and she snuggled in the crook of it, leaning comfortably against his shoulder. He pulled the team to a walk.
"Now say it yourself."