Twenty-four years made the face of Vance Cornish a little better-fed, a little more blocky of cheek, but he remained astonishingly young. At forty-nine the lumpish promise of his youth was quitegone. He was in a trim and solid middle age. His hair was thinned above the forehead, but it gavehim more dignity. On the whole, he left an impression of a man who has done things and who willdo more before he is through.He shifted his feet from the top of the porch railing and shrugged himself deeper into his chair. Itwas marvelous how comfortable Vance could make himself. He had one great power-the ability tosit still through any given interval. Now he let his eye drift quietly over the Cornish ranch. It layentirely within one grasp of the vision, spilling across the valley from Sleep Mountain, on the lowerbosom of which the house stood, to Mount Discovery on the north. Not that the glance of VanceCornish lurched across this bold distance. His gaze wandered as slowly as a free buzzes across aclover field, not knowing on which blossom to settle.Below him, generously looped, Bear Creek tumbled out of the southeast, and roved between nobleborders of silver spruce into the shadows of the Blue Mountains of the north, half a dozen milesacross and ten long of grazing and farm land, rich, loamy bottom land scattered with aspens.Beyond, covering the gentle roll of the foothills, was grazing land. Scattering lodgepole pine began inthe hills, and thickened into dense yellow-green thickets on the upper mountain slopes. And sonorth and north the eye of Vance Cornish wandered and climbed until it rested on the bald summitof Mount Discovery. It had its name out of its character, standing boldly to the south out of thejumble of the Blue Mountains.It was a solid unit, this Cornish ranch, fenced away with mountains, watered by a river, pleasantlyforested, and obviously predestined for the ownership of one man. Vance Cornish, on the porch ofthe house, felt like an enthroned king overlooking his dominions. As a matter of fact, his holdingswere hardly more than nominal