Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice. The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it. "I reckon I'll play Mr. Morse's own game and see how he likes it," the angry cattleman told his friends. But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity. Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store. "Dad gum it, I was aimin' to do that assessment work and couldn't jest lay my hands on the time. I'd been a millionaire three years and didn't know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me'll have a settlement. If the law don't right me, I reckon I'm most man enough to 'tend to Mr. Morse." It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet. Why the tenderfoot had first come West--to hide what wounds in the great baked desert--no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona's creed that a man's past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so. No doubt many had private reasons for their untrumpeted migration to that kindly Southwest which buries identity, but no wise citizen busied himself with questions about antecedents. The present served to sift one, and by the way a man met it his neighbors judged him. And T. L. Morse met it competently. In every emergency with which he had to cope the man "stood the acid." Arizona approved him a man, without according him any popularity. He was too dogmatic to win liking, but he had a genius for success. Everything he touched turned to gold.