“Having been elected without my knowledge or wish, I shall go to Denver untrammeled,” he said, still hesitating. “How I shall vote will depend upon the questions that come up for settlement.” “That’s a fool’s answer,” Davison declared. “Are you against the range, or are you for it? Will you support the interests of the cattlemen, or the interests of the farmers?” His words flushed his face still more and made his eyes very bright. There were fleshy pads under those blue eyes, and the cheeks below the pads looked flabby. Justin thought of Ben. In some respects the father and the son were alike. Yet Ben was smaller, had a weak face, and little of the towering bulk of his father, who was as tall as Justin himself. And thoughts of Ben, humiliated by defeat, of Lucy, together with the old regard, made him oblivious to the harsh words and harsher tones. Yet evasion was not possible. “I don’t think I ought to be called on to declare myself before I know just what the issues are and in what shape they will be presented,” he urged. “But you know my sentiments, Mr. Davison. You know I quit the ranch not because I did not wish to work for you, but simply because I——” “Because you were a fool; because the work of branding a bawling calf made you sick at the stomach; because you couldn’t stand it to see a starving cow wandering about in a blizzard with nothing to eat! You think—” “Mr. Davison—” “You think the cattle business is cruel and brutal, and—” “I think cattle raising as it is conducted on the open range is cruel. I can’t help that.” “And you think the farmers are the only people! You think the cattlemen are—” “I sympathize with the farmers. Perhaps that is because they are poor men and need sympathy.” “You will vote with them!” Davison lifted his voice and shook his finger in Justin’s face, leaning forward in the saddle. “After all I’ve done for you, Justin! There is a contemptible conspiracy on foot in this state to ruin the cattle business, and it has your sympathy. I have always been your friend, and Fogg is your friend; yet you’d vote us into poverty to-morrow, just on account of Clayton’s idiotic notions. I’m done with you. You needn’t ride on over to the house, for I don’t want you there. There is no one there who does want you. I hope you understand that. A man who is a man doesn’t go where he isn’t wanted. I wash my hands of you!” Having lost his temper, Philip Davison began to rave. “Yet you owe your election to ranch influences,” he shouted. “You gained your place through the defection of the cowboys from Ben. They persisted in misunderstanding what he did at the time of the fire, and they played the sneak, riding over the country by night and banding themselves together to put him down. If you lent yourself to that, it—” “I did not lend myself to it, Mr. Davison,” Justin protested, earnestly. “I did not know anything about it.”