"By loving you so strongly that you can't help yourself." "With your confidence--" she began. But he interrupted, laughing: "We're going to forget it, now," he said. "I promised to show you that _Pueblo_, and we'll have just about time enough to make it and back to the Bar B before dark." And they rode away presently, chatting on indifferent subjects. And, keeping his promise, he said not another word about his declaration. But the girl, stealing glances at him, wondered much--and reached no decision. When they reached the abandoned Indian village, many of its houses still standing, he laughed. "That would make a dandy fort." "Always thinking of fighting," she mocked. But her eyes flashed as she looked at him. CHAPTER X THE SPIRIT OF MANTI The Benham private car had clacked eastward over the rails three weeks before, bearing with it as a passenger only the negro autocrat. At the last moment, discovering that she could not dissuade Rosalind from her mad decision to stay at Blakeley's ranch, Agatha had accompanied her. The private car was now returning, bearing the man who had poetically declared to his fawning Board of Directors: "Our railroad is the magic wand that will make the desert bloom like the rose. We are embarked upon a project, gentlemen, so big, so vast, that it makes even your president feel a pulse of pride. This project is nothing more nor less than the opening of a region of waste country which an all-wise Creator has permitted to slumber for ages, for no less purpose than to reserve it to the horny-handed son of toil of our glorious country. It will awaken to the clarion call of our wealth, our brains, and our genius." He then mentioned Corrigan and the Midland grant--another reservation of Providence, which a credulous and asinine Congress had bestowed, in fee-simple, upon a certain suave gentleman, named Marchmont--and disseminated such other details as a servile board of directors need know; and then he concluded with a flowery peroration that left his hearers smirking fatuously. And today J. Chalfant Benham was come to look upon the first fruits of his efforts. As he stepped down from the private car he was greeted by vociferous cheers from a jostling and enthusiastic populace--for J. C. had very carefully wired the time of his arrival and Corrigan had acted accordingly, knowing J. C. well. J. C. was charmed--he said so, later, in a speech from a flimsy, temporary stand erected in the middle of the street in front of the _Plaza_--and in saying so he merely told the truth. For, next to money-making, adulation pleased him most. He would have been an able man had he ignored the latter passion. It seared his intellect as a pernicious habit blasts the character. It sat on his shoulders--extravagantly squared; it shone in his eyes--inviting inspection; his lips, curved with smug complacence, betrayed it as, sitting in Corrigan's office after the conclusion of the festivities, he smiled at the big man.