"Very well," I replied, getting up and stretching my arms up as high as
I could reach--which was beastly manners, of course, but a safe vent for
my feelings, which cried out for something or somebody to punch. "You've
called the turn, and I'll go. It may be many moons ere we two meet
again--and when we do, the crime of cracking my own champagne--for I paid
for it, you know--on my own automobile wheels may not seem the heinous
thing it looks now. See you later, dad."

I walked out with my head high in the air and my spirits rather low, if
the truth must be told. Dad was generally kind and wise and generous, but
he certainly did break out in unexpected places sometimes. Going to the
Bay State Ranch, just at that time, was not a cheerful prospect. San
Francisco and Seattle were just starting a series of ballgames that
promised to be rather swift, and I'd got a lot up on the result. I hated
to go just then. And Montana has the reputation of being rather beastly in
early March--I knew that much.

I caught a car down to the Olympic, hunted up Barney MacTague, and played
poker with him till two o'clock that night, and never once mentioned the
trip I was contemplating. Then I went home, routed up my man, and told him
what to pack, and went to bed for a few hours; if there was anything
pleasant in my surroundings that I failed to think of as I lay there, it
must be very trivial indeed. I even went so far as to regret leaving Ethel
Mapleton, whom I cared nothing for.

And above all and beneath all, hanging in the background of my mind and
dodging forward insistently in spite of myself, was a deep resentment--a
soreness against dad for the way he had served me. Granted I was wild and
a useless cumberer of civilization; I was only what my environments had