The extremes of heat and cold never visited Golden Valley. Spokane and the Bend country, just now sweltering in a torrid zone, might as well have been in the Sahara, for all the effect it had on this garden spot of all the Inland Empire. It was hot in the valley, but not unpleasant. In fact, the greatest charm in this secluded vale was its pleasant climate all the year round. No summer cyclones, no winter blizzards, no cloudbursts or bad thunderstorms. It was a country that, once lived in, could never be left. There were no poor inhabitants in that great area of twenty-five hundred miles; and there were many who were rich. Prosperous little towns dotted the valley floor; and the many smooth, dusty, much-used roads all led to Ruxton, a wealthy and fine city. * * * * * Anderson, the rancher, had driven his car to Spokane. Upon his return he had with him a detective, whom he expected to use in the I.W.W. investigations, and a neighbor rancher. They had left Spokane early and had endured almost insupportable dust and heat. A welcome change began as they slid down from the bare desert into the valley; and once across the Copper River, Anderson began to breathe freer and to feel he was nearing home. "God's country!" he said, as he struck the first low swell of rising land, where a cool wind from off the wooded and watered hills greeted his face. Dust there still was, but it seemed a different kind and smelled of apple-orchards and alfalfa-fields. Here were hard, smooth roads, and Anderson sped his car miles and miles through a country that was a verdant fragrant bower, and across bright, shady streams and by white little hamlets. At Huntington he dropped his neighbor rancher, and also the detective, Hall, who was to go disguised into the districts overrun by the I.W.W. A further run of forty miles put him on his own property. Anderson owned a string of farms and ranches extending from the bottom-lands to the timber-line of the mountains. They represented his life of hard work and fair dealing. Many of these orchard and vegetable lands he had tenant farmers work on shares. The uplands or wheat and grass he operated himself. As he had accumulated property he had changed his place of residence from time to time, at last to build a beautiful and permanent home farther up on the valley slope than any of the others. It was a modern house, white, with a red roof. Situated upon a high level bench, with the waving gold fields sloping up from it and the green squares of alfalfa and orchards below, it appeared a landmark from all around, and could be plainly seen from Vale, the nearest little town, five miles away.