"Then you will come back to Arcadia, reorganise youh force—you and Mistuh Bromley—and build you anotheh dam; this time in the location below the Elbow, where it should have been built befo'. Am I still cleah?"
"Why, clear enough, certainly. But I thought—I've been given to understand that you were fighting the irrigation scheme on its merits; that you didn't want your kingdom of Arcadia turned into a farming community. I don't blame you, you know."
The old cattle king's gaze went afar, through the gap to the foothills and beyond to the billowing grass-lands of Arcadia Park, and the shrewd old eyes lost something of their militant fire when he said:
"I reckon I was right selfish about that, in the beginning, Mistuh Ballard. It's a mighty fine range, suh, and I was greedy for the isolation—as some otheh men are greedy for money and the power it brings. But this heah little girl of mine she went out into the world, and came back to shame me, suh. Here was land and a living, independence and happiness, for hundreds of the world's po' strugglers, and I was making a cattle paschuh of it! Right then and thah was bo'n the idea, suh, of making a sure-enough kingdom of Arcadia, and it was my laying of the foundations that attracted Mr. Pelham and his money-hungry crowd."
"Your idea!" ejaculated Ballard. "Then Pelham and his people were interlopers?"
"You can put it that way; yes, suh. Thei-uh idea was wrapped up in a coin-sack; you could fai'ly heah it clink! Thei-uh proposal was to sell the land, and to make the water an eve'lasting tax upon it; mine was to make the water free. We hitched on that, and then they proposed to me—to me, suh—to make a stock-selling swindle of it. When I told them they were a pack of damned scoundrels, they elected to fight me, suh; and last night, please God, we saw the beginning of the end that is to be—the righteous end. But come on in to breakfast; you can't live on sentiment for always, Mistuh Ballard."
They went in together behind him, the two for whom Arcadia had suddenly been transformed into paradise, and on the way the Elsa whom Ballard had first known and learned to love in the far-distant world beyond the barrier mountains reasserted herself.
"What do you suppose Mr. Pelham will say when he hears that you have really made love to the cow-punching princess?" she asked, flippantly. "Do you usually boast of such things in advance, Mr. Ballard?"
But his answer ignored the little pin-prick of mockery.
"I'm thinking altogether of Colonel Adam Craigmiles, my dear; and of the honour he does you by being your father. He is a king, every inch of him, Elsa, girl! I'm telling you right now that we'll have to put in the high speed, and keep it in, to live up to him."