Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/113

, and fence it. I suppose you know where that is."

"I ought to," Keith said quietly. "It's funny Dick never mentioned it."

"It isn't Dick's idea," Beatrice told him. "It was Sir Redmond's. Dick is rather angry, I think, and came near quarreling with Sir Redmond about it But English capital controls the Pool, you know, and Sir Redmond controls the English capital, so he can adopt whatever policy he chooses. The way he explained the thing to me, it seems a splendid plan—don't you think so?"

"Yes." Keith's tone was not quite what he meant it to be; he did not intend it to be ironical, as it was, "It's a snap for the Pool, all right. It gives them a cinch on the best of the range, and all the water. I didn't give milord credit for such business sagacity."

Beatrice leaned over that she might read his eyes, but Keith turned his face away. In the shock of what he had just learned, he was at the moment, not the lover; he was the small cattleman who is being forced out of the business by the octopus of combined capital. It was not less bitter that the woman he loved was one of the tentacles reaching 109