He really felt that he had been hardly used. He had offered the old fool a chance to pull himself out of the hole, get on his feet, with no cost to himself. It had been a generous offer. Not only had this offer been refused unreasonably, but it had been refused ungraciously. That was how Boyd felt about it. His own attitude throughout the interview seemed to him eminently business-like and reasonable. By the time he had reached Ephraim Spinner's office he was boiling mad.
"I apologize to you," he informed the real estate man. "I thought you'd bungled the deal with old Peyton, but I take it back. Of all the unreasonable, short-sighted, pig-headed old fossils I ever came in contact with! Why, if I had a hound dog that couldn't size up his own situation and see the point of an open-and-shut proposition better, I'd tie a rock to him and drop him off the wharf!"
"I figured you'd tackle him yourself," grinned Spinner. "Glad of it. Now you know."
"Yes, now I know!" growled Boyd. "But he don't know—yet. He's a blight on the community, that fellow. Talk about your dog in the manger! He's holding up the development of Arguello worse than a dozen earthquakes! Has the whole north side of town blocked from further growth! Has some of the best farm land in the world, with thousands of people yelling for farms, and he sits on it like a toad! It ought not to be allowed!" He tramped up and down the little office chewing the end of a cigar that had gone out. Boyd was fully persuaded of what he was saying. No realization entered his head that the mainspring of his present anger and his future activity in this particular case was merely opposition, which always aroused his ruthless fighting spirit. He stared unseeing at a lithograph on the wall; then after a moment turned with a short laugh. "Well, nothing to be done there just now. Time's too short." He went on to give some directions as to the new additions.
III
The boom hit Arguello; and Arguello took it just as hard as the rest of the country, once it had thoroughly awakened. It
