For a great many years this vanity had remained ungratified. Billy had not the virtues to succeed in the rising commercialism of the new West. After the last great campaign against the Sioux, he found his usual occupations almost wiped from the slate. The plains were as safe as Illinois. He picked up a livelihood still, mainly by reason of his wonderful gift of persuasion, for Billy could talk black white, if only the particular shade and the discussion were situated in the West. He drove stage, broke horses, bossed cattle outfits, and finally drifted into prospecting. There his chance came. By a lucky stroke of trading he became possessed of some really good quartz claims and a small sum of ready cash. Two weeks later he was in Chicago. It was his first trip east of the Mississippi, but he knew just what he wanted, and he got it. Three days of Billy's golden oratory led to the purchase by an Eastern syndicate of an option on his group of claims, and the understanding that toward the middle of the following summer a committee of owners should visit the property in order to discuss ways and means of developing the various quartz leads. The delighted Billy returned to Copper Creek. There at last he found himself the important figure he had always dreamed of being. He posed to himself and to everybody else. The camp gradually filled, and the claims round about were snapped up greedily. Lafond had easily kept himself informed of all this. It was sufficiently notorious. Now when he came to a realization that the next move in his game of life was due and that he should put to its appointed use the power he had so long amassed, he decided to study Billy Knapp in order to see which of the four--property, reputation, honor or love--that volatile individual held most dear. He could make a shrewd guess, but he wanted to be on the ground. And as he thought about it, there came to him a great wave of enthusiasm and eagerness over this game he was about to play; a delight in the magnitude of the stakes and the power of the instruments employed, an intellectual glorying quite different and separated from his personal feelings in the matter, or that religious obligation of it which lay at the back of his soul. XIV INTO THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS The first thing Michaïl Lafond did in pursuance of his new determination was to visit the Spotted Tail reservation in order to reclaim the girl henceforth to be known as Molly Lafond.