Under Handicap

A silk-scarfed sybarite is hurled from Gatsby-grade opulence into the sun-cracked crucible of the frontier; Greek Conniston, golden progeny of a copper-baron patriarch, must trade champagne for calloused palms when his tycoon father slams the vault shut. Riding westward beside the sardonic Roger Hapgood, he collides with Argyl Crawford—her gaze as sharp as barbed wire and twice as dangerous—on her father’s drought-cursed spread. Smitten, Greek volunteers for the branding chutes and hay-bale infernos, toppling Brayley, the ranch’s swaggering Goliath, and earning the cowboys’ grudging reverence. A colossal irrigation dam—Crawford’s bet against the desert—looms as both promise and powder keg; Greek inherits the gargantuan task when foreman Bat Truxton sells his marrow for rival coin. Meanwhile Hapgood, now lackey to the land-grabbing syndicate, sabotages friendships and fuse lines alike. Dynamite shreds concrete and loyalty, yet Greek—mud-caked, sleepless, disowned—rebuilds the breached wall with Promethean fury, turning arid dustbowl into emerald quilt and sealing both the valley’s future and Argyl’s defiant heart.