"Well, that's all fine, then. I'm afraid you'll have to go on earning your money. I've got this house to build, and I want to see that it's built the right way. I'm going to stand guard over them. Just now, I'm going downstairs and have an account opened for me. I've got the house money with me, and if it's in the bank, Parowan will know I'm not four-flushing about the home. If the public mind needs a tonic, that ought to help."
Rayfield stood up and leaned with his knuckles on the desk.
"It will help amazingly," he said solemnly. "It will serve to instil new life in the commercial veins of this town. I tell you frankly, Bill, I did not like to pass this dividend just now, when the town has passed the first fever of enthusiasm and should be stimulated to go on with full confidence in the future. The fact that you have sufficient confidence to invest in a fine house here will have a tremendous effect on the morale of the town."
"All right," Bill grinned. "I'll go slide a pinchbar under the public mind and give it a lift. And say! Who's the best man to talk foundation to?"
"Fellow name of McGaran," Emmett told him promptly. "You'll find his sign down the street in the next block. He did our cement work, and he's a good man."
Bill went out and down the stairs, humming a little tune just above his breath. Presently, the president of the Parowan Security, Trust and Savings Bank was giving his hands a dry wash and smiling and bowing at almost everything Bill said. Teller, cashier and assistant cashier were bustling out of sight with slips of paper in their hands, looking extremely important until the ground-glass partition hid them from the front, and whispering then, heads close together, with the bookkeeper, trying his best to edge in a question or two.
"Bill Dale—he's here—just deposited sixty-thousand dollars, cashier's check from the Hibernian, in 'Frisco!" The teller took hurried pity on the bookkeeper. "He's with the boss now. Come out in a minute and consult me about a check, and take a look at him. Boy, he looks like a regular fellow!"
The bookkeeper almost missed him, at that. Bill was having his busy day. Before the bank employees quit buzzing, Bill was conferring with McGaran about cement and making time the essence of the contract, as lawyers say.
From McGaran's office Bill went to a place said to be the Town-site Office,—just behind the bank, it was. And in fifteen minutes he was riding a hard-driven automobile over slopes which had furnished scant grazing for his burros not so long ago. For himself he would have built the house beside his tent, but for Doris that wouldn't do at all. The working class had crowded into that part of town, because it was close to the mine. Wherefore, Bill examined vacant plots far removed from the grime and the noise of money-getting.
Before noon he had acquired personal title to a knoll not too far from the business section, nor so close that any part of the magnificent sweep of desert and distant mountains could ever be hidden from the windows and wide porches of his Mary's home. Laying aside his sentiment for his old camp ground, and trying to see all this with the eyes of Doris and, later, of his little Mary, Bill looked long and said to himself that he had done well.