"Partly to despise the fool who owned it and let it become a curse." "Do you know him?" the girl inquired. "No. But if I did I should despise him just the same," Joe Thomson declared. "What if he were dead?" Jerry asked. "Pardon me, but may I ask what brought you down here to look at such a place?" Joe interrupted her. "I came down here to find out its value. It belongs to me. My only inheritance. I have always lived in a big city until now, and I know little of country life except its beauty and comfort, and nothing at all of the West. But I can understand you when you say that this claim is not worth an effort. I hope I shall never, never see it again. Good-by." The firm, red lips quivered and the blue eyes looked up through real tears as Jerry Swaim drew on her gloves and fitted the soft blue hat down on the golden glory of her hair. Then without another word she turned her car about and sped away. II JERRY AND JOE VII UNHITCHING THE WAGON FROM A STAR How long is a mid-June day? Ticked off by the almanac, it is so much time as lies between the day-dawn and the dark of evening. But Jerry Swaim lived a lifetime in that June day in which she went out to enter upon her heritage. From the moment she had turned away from the young farmer under the oak-trees until she reached the forks of the road again she did not take cognizance of a single object. The three big cottonwood sentinels, the vine-covered ranch-home, the deep bend of the Sage Brush to the eastward, were passed unnoted. Ponk's gray gadabout seemed to know the way home like a faithful horse. There was no apparent reason why the junction of the two highways should have momentarily called the bewildered disappointed girl to her calmer self. No more was there anything logical in her choosing to turn again down the narrow river road. The lone old fisherman was the farthest down in the scale from Geraldine Swaim of any human being who had ever shown her a favor. He could not have had any interest for her.... But York Macpherson was correct in his estimate of Jerry. She was a type in herself alone. She drove far beyond the narrow place by the deep hole where, with accurate eye and clear skill, she had played a game of chance with the river and fate and guardian angels. Her tires had cut a wide, curving gash across the sand of the road. "My gracious alive! that was a close turn!" she exclaimed, as she caught sight of her wheel-marks. "No wonder the old Teddy Bear looked scared. One inch or less! Well, there was that inch. But what for? To enter on my vast landed--vast sanded--estate in the kingdom of Kansas!"