Dill, looking to Billy longer and lanker and mere melancholy than ever, caressed his chin meditatively and regarded Billy in his wistful, half-deprecating way. With the bitter knowledge that his castle, and with it Dill's fortune, was toppling, Billy could hardly bear to meet that look. And he had planned such great things, and had meant to make Dilly a millionaire! "What would you advise, William, under the present unfavorable conditions?" asked Dill hesitatingly. "Oh, I dunno. I've laid awake nights tryin' to pick a winning card. If it was me, and me alone, I'd pull stakes and hunt another range--and I'd go gunning after the first damn' man that stuck up a post to hang barb-wire on. But after me making such a rotten-poor job uh running the Double-Crank, I don't feel called on to lay down the law to anybody!" "If you will permit me to pass judgment, William, I will say that you have shown an ability for managing men and affairs which I consider remarkable; _quite_ remarkable. You, perhaps, do not go deep enough in searching for the cause of our misfortunes. It is not bad management or the hard winter, or Mr. Brown, even--and I blame myself bitterly for failing to read aright the 'handwriting on the wall,' to quote scripture, which I seldom do. If you have ever read history, William, you must know--even if you have _not_ read history you should know from observation--how irresistible is the march of progress; how utterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I should have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the West--the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy who tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpably careless. "Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to me. _He_ saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowed with the open range he very wisely changed his business; he became allied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we are being 'broken' on the wheel of evolutionary change, he will make his millions--" "Damn him!" gritted Billy savagely, under his breath. "He is to be admired, William. Such a man is bound in the very nature of things to succeed. It is the range and--and you, William, and those like you, that must go. It is hard--no doubt it is _extremely_ hard, but it is as irresistible as--as death itself. Civilization is compelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize the soil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in the life of humans, also.