"In all the wide border his steed was the best," and the name and fame of
Terence O'Ryan were known from Strathcona to Qu'appelle. He had ambition
of several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who knew of it. He
had no guile, and little money; but never a day's work was too hard for
him, and he took bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder and
a good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face that suited well his
wide grey eyes and large, luxurious mouth. He had an estate, half ranch,
half farm, with a French Canadian manager named Vigon, an old prospector
who viewed every foot of land in the world with the eye of the
discoverer. Gold, coal, iron, oil, he searched for them everywhere,
making sure that sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had
found coal. That was when he worked for a man called Constantine Jopp,
and had given him great profit; but he, the discoverer, had been put off
with a horse and a hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence
O'Ryan as he had been faithful to Constantine Jopp, whom he cursed waking
and sleeping.

In his time O'Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had floated a coal mine,
and "been had"; he had run for the local legislature, had been elected,
and then unseated for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races at
Regina, and won--he had won for three years in succession; and this had
kept him going and restored his finances when they were at their worst.
He was, in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far, was the
owner also of the best three-year-old that the West had produced. He
achieved popularity without effort. The West laughed at his enterprises
and loved him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It was a legend
of the West that his forbears had been kings in Ireland like Brian
Borhoime. He did not contradict this; he never contradicted anything.
His challenge to all fun and satire and misrepresentation was, "What'll