Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/134

116 would be quit of its undesirable citizens. Meantime Sheridan went on with his proselyting of the cattle breeders. Developments here were not so encouraging. He encountered the surly hostility or apathy of those who feared—and sometimes fought blindly any change that might bring about some possible benefit to the neighbors they chose to think of as rivals. More and more he saw that he must develop the project alone to the point where he was able to deliver water for the various purposes of development for Chico Mesa. Some of them he did stir up to the cultivation of patches of alfalfa, limited to those who had wells, but most of them chanced the nourishment of the native mesa feed, succulent grasses that had a wonderful faculty for outliving the rains in lucky seasons. When the grass failed, the cattlemen shipped—and the commission men ate up the bulk of the profits. They saw the differences in price between steers on the hoof and meat in the market and groaned, bewailing the hard fate of the cattle rancher, but unwilling to fall into line. If it was going to be good for them, what must it not be going to do for Sheridan? Rumors that Eastern capital was back of him spread, rumors that he looked for the big end of the deal. It was hard work and discouraging. But Mary Burrows helped.

The more he saw of her the more he marveled. Brought up by a dreaming naturalist and a romantic, invalid mother in a remote New England village, without liberal education, without reading, without contact with the world, she showed a grasp of things