"What's the matter with you?" he demanded sharply. "Can't you see the play? We got the chance to git the water on the land and make them fellers pay for it or sell to us at our own figger, ain't we? Why, it's as good as gold, man! If you don't see enough in it as it stands you are in a place where you can hold 'em up for a bonus to boot." Shandon turned away, Ettinger's point of view suddenly disgusting him. His golden opportunity had crumbled into dust and ashes. And although the little man by his side waxed voluble in alternating rage and supplication, Wayne Shandon's final word was a positive, "No!" CHAPTER XI WANDA'S DISCOVERY A supreme happiness had filled Wanda Leland's heart for a few golden hours, so thoroughly permeating every fibre of her emotional being that when sorrow came afterward it could not entirely drive out the whispering gladness. Never had the forest land seemed so big, so vast and still as during the slow days which followed. She went to it for the comfort she could not bring herself to ask of her mother just yet, and it mothered her, crooned and whispered and sang to her. Through the dew filled mornings she wandered silently; rarely did she return to the house until the sun was low in the west. Never had this world she loved seemed so vitally close to her, so big in a new sense, so eloquently an expression of the divine eternal. Her heart swelled and the talk of the pine tops entered it. They were sad, glad days. Gladness sang in her heart when in the sun-flooded mornings she rode out alone, and perhaps her devious way brought her to the spot where Red Reckless had swept her up into his arms for the first time, when his kiss had brought love into full blossom in her breast. Sadness brought its shadow and listlessness when day after day passed and she did not see him again, when the eager hope of the morning that he too would ride to that spot to meet her died down in the afternoon's invariable disappointment. Gladness when she thought of him, just of him; sadness when she thought of her father's stern face. Red Reckless had made no attempt to see her, or to communicate with her. Even while she sought to find excuses for him, that hurt her more than her loyalty would let her whisper to herself. He would come soon. He would know where to find her, know that her woman's heart was taking her to the spot where that heart had really become a woman's. He was thinking of her now as she thought of him. Her heart heard his heart talking to it across the forests and streams.