In the cool of the evening Justin Merrick drove down from the Sweetwater Dam to the Diamond Bar K ranch. It was characteristic of him that his runabout was up to date and in perfect condition. He had an expensive taste in the accessories of life, and he either got the best or did without.
Hands and face were tanned from exposure to the burning sun of the Rockies, but he was smooth-shaven and immaculate in the engineer’s suit which fitted his strong, heavy-set figure so snugly.
He drove with precision, as he did everything else in his well-ordered life. There was in his strength no quality of impatience or turbulence. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. That was why he had traveled so far on the road to success and would go a great way farther.
To-night he anticipated two pleasant hours with Betty Reed. He would tell her about the work and how it was getting along, his difficulties with the sand formation at the head gates and how he was surmounting them. Even before she spoke, he would know from her eager eyes that she was giving him the admiration due a successful man from his sweetheart.
Afterward he would pass to more direct and personal love-making, which she would evade if possible or accept shyly and reluctantly. She was wearing his ring, but he doubted whether he had really stormed the inner fortress of her heart. This uncertainty, and the assurance that went with it of a precious gift not for the first chance comer, appealed to his fastidious instinct, all the more that he was sure she would some day come to him with shining eyes and outstretched hands.
To-night Merrick found Betty distrait and troubled. Her attention to the recital of his problems was perfunctory. He was conscious of a slight annoyance. In spite of his force, Justin was a vain man, always ready to talk of himself and his achievements in a modest way to an interested and interesting young woman.
It appeared that her father had had a difficulty with some tramps, which had eventuated in insolence that had brought upon the vagrants summary physical punishment. From her account of it, Justin judged that Reed had not handled the matter very wisely. There was a way to do such things with a minimum of friction.
But he saw no need of worrying about it. The tramps had been given what they deserved and the affair was closed. It was like a woman to hold it heavily on her conscience because one of the ne’er-do-wells chanced to be young and good-looking.
“If you’d seen him,” Betty protested. “A gentleman by the look of him, or had been once, fine-grained, high-spirited, and yet so down-and-out.”
“If he’s down-and-out, it’s his own fault. A man’s never that so long as he holds to self-respect.”