"It wouldn't be right for me to urge you to vote against your conscience," she admitted, touched by his fine sense of honor. "Only, as I've tried to think it over and get at the right of it, it has seemed to me that there are, must be, two sides to the question. Every question has two sides, you know."
She went on, not sure of her ground, nor altogether certain of herself; yet feeling that this was a crucial moment and that every argument ought to be duly weighed and considered.
"You won't feel hurt if I remind you that you are inexperienced? New light may come to you, so that the opinions you now hold you may not hold a year from now."
"That is true; but so long as I do hold them I must be honest about it."
"It is the opinion of Uncle Philip that this annoyance of the settlers cannot last. He says there are only a few places where they can farm successfully. But in the meantime, while they are trying every place, they are making a vast amount of trouble, by thus spreading all over the country. You know, yourself, that some of them are taking land where water can never be got to it. The immediate result will be, Uncle Philip says, that the ranchmen will be almost ruined, by being forced to surrender land to them that can never be fit for anything but a cattle range. The settlers will find out by and by that the land cannot be farmed; but while they are finding it out, and bringing loss to themselves, they will bring the downfall of the cattlemen."
"I have thought of all these things," he said.
He looked at her earnestly. He was troubled.
"Lucy, I wish I only knew what I ought to do in this crisis! I must face it and do something. I have looked for your Uncle Philip, and intend to look for him again, and shall try to have a talk with him. He is my father, and when he knows that he is, and I ask him to advise me as a father would advise a son----." He stopped, in hesitation. "Anyway, whatever I do--whatever I do--remember that I love you!"
As soon as she was gone, he began another search for his father, driven by the feeling that he must explain fully to Davison his views and motives, as well as hear Davison's arguments and opinions, and so perhaps be able to stand erect in Philip Davison's estimation, as well as in his own. This was an anxious, even a wild desire, and it pressed him hard.