Visit https://ebookfinal.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in

Euclidean Space 1st Edition Samia Challal
(Author)

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookfinal.com/download/introduction-to-the-
theory-of-optimization-in-euclidean-space-1st-edition-
samia-challal-author/

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookfinal.com

Here are some suggested products you might be interested in.
Click the link to download

An Introduction to Nonlinear Optimization Theory Durea

https://ebookfinal.com/download/an-introduction-to-nonlinear-
optimization-theory-durea/

Introduction to Operator Space Theory Gilles Pisier

https://ebookfinal.com/download/introduction-to-operator-space-theory-
gilles-pisier/

Convex optimization and Euclidean distance geometry

Dattorro J.

https://ebookfinal.com/download/convex-optimization-and-euclidean-
distance-geometry-dattorro-j/

An Introduction to Space Weather Moldwin

https://ebookfinal.com/download/an-introduction-to-space-weather-
moldwin/
Introduction to Convex Optimization 3-4 Edition Elad Hazan

https://ebookfinal.com/download/introduction-to-convex-
optimization-3-4-edition-elad-hazan/

Barycentric Calculus in Euclidean and Hyperbolic Geometry

A Comparative Introduction 1st Edition Abraham Albert
Ungar
https://ebookfinal.com/download/barycentric-calculus-in-euclidean-and-
hyperbolic-geometry-a-comparative-introduction-1st-edition-abraham-
albert-ungar/

An introduction to the theory of knowledge 1st Edition

Noah Lemos

https://ebookfinal.com/download/an-introduction-to-the-theory-of-
knowledge-1st-edition-noah-lemos/

Salomon Maimon s Theory of Invention Scientific Genius

Analysis and Euclidean Geometry Idit Chikurel

https://ebookfinal.com/download/salomon-maimon-s-theory-of-invention-
scientific-genius-analysis-and-euclidean-geometry-idit-chikurel/

Vagabond Vol 29 29 Inoue

https://ebookfinal.com/download/vagabond-vol-29-29-inoue/
Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean
Space 1st Edition Samia Challal (Author) Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Samia Challal (Author)
ISBN(s): 9780429515163, 0429515162
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 21.03 MB
Year: 2019
Language: english
Introduction to the
Theory of
Optimization in
Euclidean Space
Series in Operaons Research
Series Editors:
Malgorzata Sterna, Marco Laumanns

About the Series

The CRC Press Series in Operaons Research encompasses books that
contribute to the methodology of Operaons Research and applying advanced
analycal methods to help make beer decisions.
The scope of the series is wide, including innovave applicaons of Operaons
Research which describe novel ways to solve real-world problems, with
examples drawn from industrial, compung, engineering, and business
applicaons. The series explores the latest developments in Theory and
Methodology, and presents original research results contribung to the
methodology of Operaons Research, and to its theorecal foundaons.
Featuring a broad range of reference works, textbooks and handbooks, the
books in this Series will appeal not only to researchers, praconers and
students in the mathemacal community, but also to engineers, physicists,
and computer sciensts. The inclusion of real examples and applicaons is
highly encouraged in all of our books.

Raonal Queueing
Refael Hassin

Introducon to the Theory of Opmizaon in Euclidean Space

Samia Challal

For more informaon about this series please visit: hps://www.crcpress.com/Chapman--HallCRC-Series-in-

Operaons-Research/book-series/CRCOPSRES
Introduction to the
Theory of
Optimization in
Euclidean Space

Samia Challal
Glendon College-York University
Toronto, Canada
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742


c 2020 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Printed on acid-free paper

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-367-19557-1 (Hardback)

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Rea-
sonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the conse-
quences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright
holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if
permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not
been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted,
reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and record-
ing, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the
publishers.

For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access
www.copyright.com (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Cen-
ter, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-
for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For
organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system
of payment has been arranged.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-

marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com

and the CRC Press Web site at

http://www.crcpress.com
To my parents
Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Symbol Description xiii

Author xv

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Formulation of Some Optimization Problems . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Particular Subsets of Rn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Functions of Several Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2 Unconstrained Optimization 49
2.1 Necessary Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.2 Classification of Local Extreme Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.3 Convexity/Concavity and Global Extreme Points . . . . . . 93
2.3.1 Convex/Concave Several Variable Functions . . . . . 93
2.3.2 Characterization of Convex/Concave C 1 Functions . . 95
2.3.3 Characterization of Convex/Concave C 2 Functions . . 98
2.3.4 Characterization of a Global Extreme Point . . . . . . 102
2.4 Extreme Value Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

3 Constrained Optimization-Equality Constraints 135

3.1 Tangent Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3.2 Necessary Condition for Local Extreme
Points-Equality Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.3 Classification of Local Extreme Points-Equality
Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
3.4 Global Extreme Points-Equality Constraints . . . . . . . . . 187

4 Constrained Optimization-Inequality Constraints 203

4.1 Cone of Feasible Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
4.2 Necessary Condition for Local Extreme Points/
Inequality Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
4.3 Classification of Local Extreme Points-Inequality
Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

vii
viii Contents

4.4 Global Extreme Points-Inequality Constraints . . . . . . . . 271

4.5 Dependence on Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Bibliography 315

Index 317
Preface

The book is intended to provide students with a useful background in opti-

mization in Euclidean space. Its primary goal is to demystify the theoretical
aspect of the subject.

In presenting the material, we refer first to the intuitive idea in one dimension,
then make the jump to n dimension as naturally as possible. This approach
allows the reader to focus on understanding the idea, skip the proofs for later
and learn to apply the theorems through examples and solving problems. A
detailed solution follows each problem constituting an image and a deepening
of the theory. These solved problems provide a repetition of the basic princi-
ples, an update on some difficult concepts and a further development of some
ideas.

Students are taken progressively through the development of the proofs where
they have the occasion to practice tools of differentiation (Chain rule, Taylor
formula) for functions of several variables in abstract situation. They learn to
apply important results established in advanced Algebra and Analysis courses,
like, Farkas-Minkowski Lemma, the implicit function theorem and the extreme
value theorem.

The book starts, in Chapter 1, with a short introduction to mathematical

modeling leading to formulation of optimization problems. Each formulation
involves a function and a set of points. Thus, basic properties of open, closed,
convex subsets of Rn are discussed. Then, usual topics of differential calculus
for functions of several variables are reminded.

In the following chapters, the study is devoted to the optimisation of a function

of several variables f over a subset S of Rn . Depending on the particularity of
this set, three situations are identified. In Chapter 2, the set S has a nonempty
interior; in Chapter 3, S is described by an equation g(x) = 0 and in Chapter 4

ix
x Preface

by an inequality g(x)  0 where g is a function of several variables. In each

case, we try to answer the following questions:

– If the extreme point exists, then where is it located in S? Here, we

look for necessary conditions to have candidate points for optimality.
We make the distinction between local and global points.

– Among the local candidate points, which of them are local maximum or
local minimum points? Here, we establish sufficient conditions to identify
a local candidate point as an extreme point.

– Now, among the local extreme points found, which ones are global ex-
treme points? Here, the convexity/concavity property intervenes for a
positive answer.
Finally, we explore how the extreme value of the objective function f is affected
when some parameters involved in the definition of the functions f or g change
slightly.
Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to my colleagues David Spring, Mario Roy and Alexander

Nenashev for introducing the course on optimization, for the first time, to
our math program and giving me the opportunity to teach it. I, especially,
thank Professor Vincent Hildebrand, Chair of the Economics Department for
the useful discussions during the planning of the course content to support
students majoring in Economics.
My thanks are also due to Sarfraz Khan and Callum Fraser from Taylor
and Francis Group, to the reviewers for their invaluable help, and to Shashi
Kumar for the expert technical support.
I have relied on the various authors cited in the bibliography, and I am
grateful to all of them. Many exercises are drawn or adapted from the cited
references for their aptitude to reinforce the understanding of the material.

xi
Symbol Description

n
1/2
∀ For all, or for each A = a2ij norm of the ma-
i,j=1
∃ There exists
trix A = (aij )i,j=1,...,n
∃! There exists a unique
rankA rank of the matrix A
∅ The empty set
detA determinant of the matrix A
s.t Subject to
◦
KerA = {x : Ax = 0} Kernel of the ma-
S Interior of the set S trix A

∂S Closure of the set S th = h1 ... hn transpose of

⎡ ⎤
h1
S Boundary of the set S ⎢ ⎥
h = ⎣ .. ⎦
.
CS The complement of S.
hn
i, j, k i = (1, 0, 0), j = (0, 1, 0), k =
n
(0, 0, 1) standard basis of R3 t h.x∗ = hk .xk dot product of the
Br (x0 ) Ball centered at x0 with radius r k=1
vectors h and x∗
Br (x0 ) Bordered Hessian of order r at x0 .
C 1 (D) set of continuously differentiable
., . or [ . , . ] brackets for vectors functions on D

∇f gradient of f C k (D) set of continuously differentiable

⎡ ∗ ⎤ functions on D up to the order k
x1
⎢ . ⎥ C ∞ (D)
x∗ = ⎣ . ⎦ column vector iden- set of continuously differentiable
.
functions on D for any order k
x∗n
tified sometimes to the point Hf (x) = (fxi xj )n×n Hessian of f
(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n )
  
 fx 1 x 1 fx 1 x 2 ... fx 1 x k 
x21 + x22 + . . . + x2n norm of  
x =  
 
the vector x  fx 2 x 1 fx 2 x 2 ... fx 2 x k 
 
 
Mm n set of matrices of m rows and n Dk (x) = 
 . .. .. .. 
columns  .. . 
 . .
 
 
A = (aij ) i = 1, . . . , m, is an m × f fx k x 2 ... fx k x k 
xk x1
j = 1, . . . , n leading minor of order k of the
n matrix Hessian Hf

xiii
Author

Samia Challal is an assistant professor of Mathematics at Glendon College,

the bilingual campus of York University. Her research interests include homog-
enization, optimization, free boundary problems, partial differential equations
and problems arising from mechanics.

xv
Chapter 1
Introduction

Optimization problems arise in different domains. In Section 1.1 of this chapter, we

introduce some applications and learn how to model a situation as an optimization
problem.
The points where an optimal quantity is attained are looked for in subsets that can
be one dimensional, multi-dimensional, open, closed, bounded or unbounded, . . . etc.
We devote Section 1.2 to study some topological properties of such subsets of Rn .
Finally, since, the phenomena analyzed are often complex, because of the many pa-
rameters that are involved, this requires an introduction to functions of several vari-
ables that we study in Section 1.3.

1.1 Formulation of Some Optimization Problems

The purpose of this short section is to show, through some examples, the
main elements involved in an optimization problem.

Example 1. Different ways in modeling a problem.

To minimize the material in manufacturing a closed can with volume capacity

of V units, we need to choose a suitable radius for the container.

i) Show how to make this choice without finding the exact radius.
ii) How to choose the radius if the volume V may vary from one liter to
two liters?

1
2 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

Solution: Denote by h and r the height and the radius of the can respectively.
Then, the area and the volume of the can are given by

area = A = 2πr2 + 2πrh, volume = V = πr2 h.

i) * The area can be expressed as a function of r and the problem is reduced
to find r ∈ (0, +∞) for which A is minimum:
⎧
⎪ 2V
⎨ minimize A = A(r) = 2πr2 + over the set S
r
⎪
⎩
S = (0, +∞) = {r ∈ R / r > 0}.

Note that the set S, as shown in Figure 1.1, is an open unbounded interval
of R.

interval r0

r
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

FIGURE 1.1: S = (0, +∞) ⊂ R

** We can also express the problem as follows:

⎧
⎨ minimize A(r, h) = 2πr2 + 2πrh over the set S
⎩
S = {(r, h) ∈ R+ × R+ / πr2 h = V }.

Here, the set S is a curve in R2 and is illustrated by Figure 1.2 below:

h

2.0

1.5

1.0

S
0.5

r
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

FIGURE 1.2: S is a curve h = π −1 /r2 in the plane (V=1 liter)

ii) In the case, we allow more possibilities for the volume, for example 1 
V  2, then we can formulate the problem as a two dimensional problem
 Introduction 3
⎧ 2
⎪
⎨ minimize A(r, h) = 2πr + 2πrh over the set S

⎪
⎩ S = {(r, h) ∈ R+ × R+ 1 2
/  h  2 }.
πr2 πr
The set S is the plane region, in the first quadrant, between the curves
1 2
h = 2 and h = 2 (see Figure 1.3).
πr πr
h
3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0 S

0.5

r
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

FIGURE 1.3: S is a plane region between two curves

A three dimensional formulation of the same problem is

⎧
⎪ 2V
⎨ minimize A(r, h, V ) = 2πr2 + over the set S
r
⎪
⎩
S = {(r, h, V ) ∈ R+ × R+ × R+ / πr2 h = V, 1  V  2}

where, the set S ⊂ R3 is the part of the surface V = πr2 h located between
the planes V = 1 and V = 2 in the first octant; see Figure 1.4.
3
h
2

0
1.0

V
0.5

0.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
r
1.5

2.0

FIGURE 1.4: S is a surface in the space

4 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

Example 2. Too many variables and linear inequalities.

Diet Problem. * One can buy four types of aliments where the nutritional
content per unit weight of each food and its price are shown in Table 1.1 [5].
The diet problem consists of obtaining, at the minimum cost, at least twelve
calories and seven vitamins.

type1 type2 type3 type4

calories 2 1 0 1
vitamins 3 4 3 5
price 2 2 1 8

TABLE 1.1: A diet problem with four variables

Solution: Let ui be the weight of the food of type i. The total price of the
four aliments consumed is given by the relation

2u1 + 2u2 + u3 + 8u4 = f (u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 ).

To ensure that at least twelve calories and seven vitamins are included, we
can express these conditions by writing

2u1 + u2 + u4  12 and 3u1 + 4u2 + 3u3 + 5u4  7.

Hence, the problem would be

⎧ 
⎨ minimize f (u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 ) over the set S = (u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 ) ∈ R4 :

⎩ 2u1 + u2 + u4  12, 3u1 + 4u2 + 3u3 + 5u4  7 .

** The above problem is rendered more complex if more factors (fat,

proteins) and types of food (steak, potatoes, fish, ...) were to be considered.
For example, from Table 1.2, we deduce that the total price of the seven

type1 type2 type3 type4 type5 type6 type7

protein 3 1 2 7 8 5 10
f at 0 1 0 8 15 10 6
calories 2 1 0 1 5 7 9
vitamins 3 4 3 5 1 2 5
price 2 2 1 8 12 10 8

TABLE 1.2: A diet problem with seven variables

 Introduction 5

aliments consumed is
2u1 + 2u2 + u3 + 8u4 + 12u5 + 10u6 + 8u7 = p(u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 , u5 , u6 , u7 ).
To ensure that at least twelve calories, seven vitamins, twenty proteins are
included, and less than fifteen fats are consumed, the problem would be for-
mulated as
⎧
⎪
⎪ minimize p(u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 , u5 , u6 , u7 ) over the set
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ S = (u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 , u5 , u6 , u7 ) ∈ R7 :
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎨ 3u1 + u2 + 2u3 + 7u4 + 8u5 + 5u6 + 10u7  20
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ u2 + 8u4 + 15u5 + 10u6 + 6u7  15
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 2u1 + u2 + u4 + 5u5 + 7u6 + 9u7  12
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
⎪
⎪
⎩ 3u1 + 4u2 + 3u3 + 5u4 + u5 + 2u6 + 5u7  7.

Example 3. Too many variables and nonlinearities.

* A company uses x units of capital and y units of labor to produce x y
units of a manufactured good. Capital can be purchased at 3$/ unit and labor
can be purchased at 2$/ unit. A total of 6$ is available to purchase capital
and labor. How can the firm maximize the quantity of the good that can be
manufactured?

Solution: We need to maximize the quantity x y on the set of points (see

Figure 1.5)
y
3

2 L2

L3

1 S

x
1 1 2 3

L1

1

FIGURE 1.5: S is a triangular region in the plane

S = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : 3x + 2y  6, x  0, y  0}.
6 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

The set S is the triangular plane region bounded by the sides L1 , L2 and L3 ,
defined by: L1 = {(x, 0), 0  x  2},

L2 = {(0, y), 0  y  3}, L3 = {(x, (6 − 3x)/2), 0  x  2}.

Here, the objective function f (x, y) = xy is nonlinear and the set S is described
by linear inequalities.

** Such a model may work for a certain production process. However, it may
not reflect the situation as other factors involved in the production process
cannot be ignored. Therefore, new models have to be considered. For Exam-
ple [7]:
- The Canadian manufacturing industries for 1927 is estimated by:

P (l, k) = 33l0.46 k 0.52

where P is product, l is labor and k is capital.

- The production P for the dairy farming in Iowa (1939) is estimated by:

P (A, B, C, D, E, F ) = A0.27 B 0.01 C 0.01 D0.23 E 0.09 F 0.27

where A is land, B is labor, C is improvements, D is liquid assets, E is

working assets and F is cash operating expenses.
Each of these nonlinear production function P is optimized on a suitable set
S that describes well the elements involved.

As seen above, the main purpose, of this study, is to find a solution to the
following optimization problems

find u ∈ S such that f (u) = min f (v)

S
or
find u ∈ S such that f (u) = max f (v)
S

where f : S ⊂ R −→ R is a given function and S a given subset of Rn .

n

It is obvious that establishing existence and uniqueness results of the extreme

points, depends on properties satisfied by the set S and the function f . So,
we need to know some categories of subsets in Rn as well as some calculus on
multi-variable functions. But, first look at the following remark:
 Introduction 7

Remark 1.1.1 The extreme point may not exist on the set S. In our study,
we will explore the situations where min f and max f are attained in S.
S S

For example

min f (x) = x2 does not exist.

(0,1)

Indeed, suppose there exists x0 ∈ (0, 1) such that f (x0 ) = min f (x). Then,
(0,1)

x0 x0
0< < x0 =⇒ ∈ (0, 1)
2 2
x0
f is a strictly increasing function on (0, 1) =⇒ f( ) < f (x0 ),
2
which contradicts the fact that x0 is a minimum point of f on (0, 1). However,
we remark that

f (x) > 0 ∀x ∈ (0, 1).

To include these limit cases, usually, instead of looking for a minimum or a

maximum, we look for

inf f (x) = inf{f (x) : x ∈ S} and sup f (x) = sup{f (x) : x ∈ S}

S S

where inf E and sup E of a nonempty subset E of R are defined by [2]

sup E = the least number greater than or equal to all numbers in E

inf E = the greatest number less than or equal to all numbers in E.

If E is not bounded below, we write inf E = −∞. If E is not bounded above,

we write sup E = +∞. By convention, we write sup ∅ = −∞ and inf ∅ = +∞.

For the previous example, we have

inf x2 = 0, and sup x2 = 1.

(0,1) (0,1)
8 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

1.2 Particular Subsets of Rn

We list here the main categories of sets that we will encounter and give the
main tools that allow their identification easily. Even though the purpose is
not a topological study of these sets, it is important to be aware of the precise
definitions and how to apply them accurately [18], [13].

Open and Closed Sets

In one dimension, the distance between two real numbers x and y is mea-
sured by the absolute value function and is given by

d(x, y) = |x − y|.

d satisfies, for any x, y, z, the properties

d(x, y)  0 d(x, y) = 0 ⇐⇒ x = y
d(y, x) = d(x, y) symmetry
d(x, z)  d(x, y) + d(y, z) triangle inequality.

These three properties induce on R a metric topology where a set O is said to

be open if and only if, at each point x0 ∈ O, we can insert a small interval
centered at x0 that remains included in O, that is,

O is open ⇐⇒ ∀x0 ∈ O ∃ > 0 such that (x0 − , x0 + ) ⊂ O.

In higher dimension, these tools are generalized as follows:

The distance between two points x = (x1 , · · · , xn ) and y = (y1 , · · · , yn ) is
measured by the quantity

d(x, y) = x − y = (x1 − y1 )2 + . . . + (xn − yn )2 .

d is called the Euclidean distance and satisfies the three properties above. A
set O ⊂ Rn is said to be open if and only if, at each point x0 ∈ O, we can
insert a small ball

B (x0 ) = {x ∈ Rn : x − x0 < }
 Introduction 9

centered at x0 with  that remains included in O, that is,

O is open ⇐⇒ ∀x0 ∈ O ∃ > 0 such that B (x0 ) ⊂ O.

The point x0 is said to be an interior point to O.

Example 1. As n varies, the ball takes different shapes; see Figure 1.6.
n=1 a∈R Br (a) = (a − r, a + r) : an open interval

n=2 a = (a1 , a2 ) Br (a) = {(x1 , x2 ) : (x1 − a1 )2 + (x2 − a2 )2 < r2 } :

an open disk

n=3 a = (a1 , a2 , a3 )
Br (a) = {(x1 , x2 , x3 ) : (x1 − a1 )2 + (x2 − a2 )2 + (x3 − a3 )2 < r2 } :
set of points delimited by the sphere centered at a with radius r

n>3 a = (a1 , . . . , a3 ) Br (a) is the set of points delimited by

the hyper sphere of points x satisfying d(a, x) = r.

y 4
y 2
3 0
2
2 4
4 sphere
1 disk 2
interval 2  x  2 x2  y2  z2  4
z 0
2 1 0 1 2 x
3 2 1 1 2 3
x2  y2  4 2
1
4
4
2 2
0
x 2
3 4

FIGURE 1.6: Shapes of balls in R, R2 and R3

Using the distance d, we define

Definition 1.2.1 Let S be a subset of Rn .

◦
– S is the interior of S, the set of all interior points of S.
– S is a neighborhood of a if a is an interior point of S.
10 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

– S is a closed set ⇐⇒ C S is open.

– ∂S is the boundary of S, the set of boundary points of S, where

x0 ∈ ∂S ⇐⇒ ∀r > 0, Br (x0 )∩ S = ∅ and Br (x0 )∩ C S = ∅.

– S = S ∪ ∂S is the closure of S.
– S is bounded ⇐⇒ ∃M >0 such that x M ∀x ∈ S.

– S is unbounded if it is not bounded.

Example 2. For the sets, S1 = [−2, 2] ⊂ R

S2 = {(x, y) : x2 +y 2  4} ⊂ R2 , S3 = {(x, y, z) : x2 +y 2 +z 2 < 4} ⊂ R3 ,

we have
◦
S S ∂S S

S1 (−2, 2) {−2, 2} S1

S2 B2 (0) C2 (0) : circle S2

S3 S3 = B2 (0) S2 (0) : sphere S3 ∪ S2 (0)

where

C2 (0) = {(x, y) : x2 + y 2 = 4}, S2 (0) = {(x, y, z) : x2 + y 2 + z 2 = 4}.

We have the following properties:

Remark 1.2.1 – Rn and ∅ are open and closed sets

– The union (resp. intersection) of arbitrary open (resp. closed) sets is
open (resp. closed).
– The finite intersection (resp. union) of open (resp. closed) sets is open
(resp. closed).
◦
– S is open ⇐⇒ S = S.

– S is closed ⇐⇒ S = S.
 Introduction 11

– If f is continuous on an open subset Ω ⊂ Rn (see Section 1.3), then

f −1 (−∞, a] = [f  a], [f  a], [f = a] are closed sets in Rn

f −1 (−∞, a) = [f < a], [f > a] are open sets in Rn .

Example 3. Sketch the set S in the xy-plane and determine whether it is

◦
open, closed, bounded or unbounded. Give S, ∂S and S.
S = {(x, y) : x  0, y  0, xy  1}

y
5

3 xy1 x0 y0

x
2 1 1 2 3 4 5

1

2

FIGURE 1.7: An unbounded closed subset of R2

∗ Note that the set S, sketched in Figure 1.7, doesn’t contain the points on
the x and y axis. So
S = {(x, y) : x > 0, y > 0, xy  1}
and can be described using the continuous function f : (x, y) −→ xy on the
open set Ω = {(x, y) : x > 0, y > 0} as

S = {(x, y) ∈ Ω : f (x, y)  1} = f −1 [1, +∞) .

Therefore, S is a closed subset of R2 . Thus S = S.

∗∗ The set is unbounded since it contains the points (x(t), y(t)) = (t, t) for
t  1 (xy = t.t = t2  1) and
 √
(x(t), y(t)) = (t, t) = t2 + t2 = 2t −→ +∞ as t −→ +∞.
12 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

∗ ∗ ∗ We have
◦
S = {(x, y) : x > 0, y > 0, xy > 1}
1
the region in the 1st quadrant above the hyperbola y =
x

∂S = {(x, y) : x > 0, y > 0, xy = 1}

the arc of the hyperbola in the 1st quadrant.

Example 4. A person can afford any commodities x  0 and y  0 that

satisfies the budget inequality x + 3y  7.
Sketch the set S described by these inequalities in the xy-plane and determine
◦
whether it is open, closed, bounded or unbounded. Give S, ∂S and S.
y
4

1 S

x
2 4 6

1

FIGURE 1.8: Closed set as intersection of three closed sets of R2

∗ Figure 1.8 shows that S is the triangular region formed by all the points in
the first quadrant below the line x + 3y = 7 :

S = {(x, y) : x + 3y  7, x  0, y  0}

and can be described using the continuous functions

f1 : (x, y) −→ x + 3y, f2 : (x, y) −→ x, f3 : (x, y) −→ y

on R2 as

S = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : f1 (x, y)  7, f2 (x, y)  0, f3 (x, y)  0}

= f1−1 (−∞, 7] f2−1 [0, +∞) f3−1 [0, +∞) .

Therefore, S is a closed subset of R2 as the intersection of three closed subsets

of R2 . Thus S = S.
 Introduction 13

∗∗ The set S is bounded since

7
x + 3y  7, x  0, y0 =⇒ 0  x  7, 0y
3
from which we deduce

 7 2 7√
(x, y) = x2 + y 2  72 + = 10 ∀(x, y) ∈ S.
3 3

∗ ∗ ∗ We have
◦
S = {(x, y) : x > 0, y > 0, x + 3y < 7} the region S excluding its three sides

∂S = the three sides of the triangular region.

Convex sets

The category of convex sets, deals with sets S ⊂ Rn where any two points
x, y ∈ S can be joined by a line segment that remains entirely into the set.
Such sets are without holes and do not bend inwards. Thus
S is convex ⇐⇒ (1 − t)x + ty ∈ S ∀x, y ∈ S ∀t ∈ [0, 1].

We have the following properties:

Remark 1.2.2 – Rn and ∅ are convex sets

– A finite intersection of convex sets is a convex set.

Example 5. “Well known convex sets” (see Figure 1.9)

∗ A line segment joining two points x and y is convex. It is described by

[x, y] = {z ∈ Rn : ∃t ∈ [0, 1] such that z = x + t(y − x) = (1 − t)x + ty}.

∗∗ A line passing through two points x0 and x1 is convex. It is described by
L = {x ∈ Rn : ∃t ∈ R such that x = x0 + t(x1 − x0 )}.
14 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space
y
5

3
line segment
B 2 disk

line
1
A

x
4 2 2 4 6

1

FIGURE 1.9: Convex sets in R2

∗ ∗ ∗ A ball Br (x0 ) = {x ∈ Rn : x − x0 < r} is convex.

Indeed, let a and b in Br (x0 ) and t ∈ [0, 1], we have

[(1 − t)a + tb] − x0 = (1 − t)(a − x0 ) + t(b − x0 )

 (1 − t)(a − x0 ) + t(b − x0 ) = |1 − t| a − x0 + |t| b − x0

< |1 − t|r + |t|r = r since a − x0 < 1 and b − x0 < 1.

Hence (1 − t)a + tb ∈ Br (x0 ) for any t ∈ [0, 1]; that is, [a, b] ⊂ Br (x0 ).

y
2

x2  y2  4

x
2 1 1 2

closed disk
1

2

FIGURE 1.10: A closed ball is convex

∗ ∗ ∗∗ A closed ball Br (x0 ) = {x ∈ Rn : x − x0  r} is convex.

For example, in the plane, the set in Figure 1.10, defined by

{(x, y) : x2 + y 2  4} = B2 ((0, 0)) is convex.

 Introduction 15

The set is the closed disk with center (0, 0) and radius 2. It is closed since it
includes its boundary points located on the circle with center (0, 0) and radius
2. This set is bounded since (x, y)  2 ∀(x, y) ∈ B2 ((0, 0)).

Example 6. “Convex sets described by linear expressions”

∗ For a = (a1 , . . . , an ) ∈ Rn , b ∈ R, the set of points

x = (x1 , . . . , xn ) ∈ Rn : a1 x1 + a2 x2 + . . . + an xn = a.x = b

is convex and called hyperplane.

Indeed, consider x1 , x2 in the hyperplane and t ∈ [0, 1], then

a.[(1 − t)x1 + tx2 ] = (1 − t)a.x1 + ta.x2 = (1 − t)b + tb = b

thus (1 − t)x1 + tx2 belongs to the hyperplane.

As illustrated in Figure 1.11, the graph of an hyperplane is reduced to the

point x1 = b/a1 when n = 1, to the line a1 x1 + a2 x2 = b in the plane when
n = 2, and to the plane a1 x1 + a2 x2 + a3 x3 = b in the space when n = 3.

4
y y 2
2.0 0
2
4
1.5 4 hyperplane

hyperplane 2
1.0
x z 0
3 2 1 0 1 2 3 hyperplane
0.5
2

4
x 4
2 1 1 2
2
0
0.5 x 2
4

FIGURE 1.11: Hyperplane in R, R2 and R3

∗∗ The set of points in x = (x1 , . . . , xn ) ∈ Rn defined by a linear inequality

a1 x1 + a2 x2 + . . . + an xn = a.x  b (resp. , <, >) is convex.

Indeed, as above, consider x1 , x2 in the region [a.x  b] and t ∈ [0, 1], then

a.x1  b =⇒ (1 − t)a.x1  (1 − t)b since (1 − t)  0

a.x2  b =⇒ ta.x2  tb since t0

16 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

Adding the two inequalities, we get

a.[(1 − t)x1 + tx2 ] = (1 − t)a.x1 + ta.x2  (1 − t)b + tb = b

thus (1 − t)x1 + tx2 belongs to the region [a.x  b].

The set a.x  b describes the region of points located below the hyperplane
a.x = b.

∗ ∗ ∗ A set of points in Rn described by linear equalities and inequalities

is convex as it can be seen as the intersection of convex sets described by
equalities and inequalities.
For example, in Figure 1.12, the set

S = {(x, y) : 2x + 3y  19, −3x + 2y  4, x + y  8, 0  x  6, x + 6y  0}

can be described as S = S1 ∩ S2 ∩ S3 ∩ S4 ∩ S5 ∩ S6 where

S1 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x + 6y  0} S2 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x  6}

S3 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x + y  8} S4 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : 2x + 3y  19}

S5 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : −3x + 2y  4} S6 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x  0}.

L4
4 L5

L3

2 S

L2
L6

x
2 4 6
L1

FIGURE 1.12: A convex set described by linear inequalities

 Introduction 17

S is the region of the plan xy, bounded by the lines

L1 : x + 6y = 0 L2 : x = 6, L3 : x + y = 8,
L4 : 2x + 3y = 19, L5 : −3x + 2y = 4 L6 : x = 0.

Often, such sets are described using matrices and vectors;

⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
2 3 19
⎢ −3 2 ⎥ ⎢ 4 ⎥
 x  ⎢ ⎥  ⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
S = ∈ R2 : ⎢ 1 1 ⎥ x
⎢
8 ⎥ .
y ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ 1 0 ⎥ y ⎢ 6 ⎥
⎣ −1 −6 ⎦ ⎣ 0 ⎦
−1 0 0

Example 7. “Well-known non convex sets”

∗ The hyper-sphere (see Figure 1.13 for an illustration in the plane)
∂Br (x∗ ) = {x ∈ Rn : x − x0 = r} is not convex.
y
3

circle
1

x  12  y  12  4

x
1 1 2 3

1

FIGURE 1.13: Circle ∂B2 ((1, 1)) is not convex

Indeed, we have

(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n ± r) ∈ ∂Br (x∗ ) since (0, . . . , ±r) = r

1 
 1 
 (x∗1 , . . . , x∗n + r) + (1 − )(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n − r) − x∗ 
2 2
1 
 
=  (2x∗1 , . . . , 2x∗n + r − r) − x∗  = x∗ − x∗ = 0 = r
2
1 ∗ 1
=⇒ (x , . . . , x∗n + r) + (1 − )(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n − r) = x∗ ∈ ∂Br (x∗ ).
2 1 2

∗∗ The domain located outside the hyper-sphere, described by

S = {x ∈ Rn : x − x∗ > r} = Rn \ Br (x∗ ) is not convex.
18 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space
y
4

x2  y2  4
2

x
4 2 2 4

2

4

FIGURE 1.14: An unbounded open non convex set of R2

Indeed, we have

(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n ± 2r) ∈ S since (0, . . . , ±2r) = 2r > r

1 ∗ 1
(x1 , . . . , x∗n + 2r) + (1 − )(x∗1 , . . . , x∗n − 2r)
2 2
1
= (2x∗1 , . . . , 2x∗n + 2r − 2r) = x∗ ∈ S.
2
For example, in the plane, the set
{(x, y) : x2 + y 2 > 4} = R2 \ B2 ((0, 0)) is not convex.
Moreover, the set is open since it is the complementary of the closed disk with
center (0, 0) and radius 2 (see Figure 1.14). It is not bounded since for t  2,
the points (0, t2 ) belong to the set, but (0, t2 ) = t2 −→ +∞ as t −→ +∞.

∗ ∗ ∗ The region located outside the hyper-sphere, including the hyper-sphere,

described by
S = {x ∈ Rn : x − x0  r} = Rn \ Br (x∗ ) is not convex.

Example 8. “The union of convex sets is not necessarily convex ”

∗ The union of the disk and the line in Figure 1.9 is not convex.

∗∗ The set E = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : xy + x − y − 1 > 0}, graphed in Figure 1.15,

is not convex.
 Introduction 19

Indeed, we have

xy + x − y − 1 > 0 ⇐⇒ (x − 1)(y + 1) > 0

⇐⇒ x > 1 and y > −1 or x<1 and y < −1.

Thus E is the union of the sets

E1 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x > 1 and y > −1}

E2 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 : x < 1 and y < −1}

E1 and E2 are convex since they are described by linear inequalities. However,
E = E1 ∪ E2 is not convex since for example (2, 0) and (0, −2) are points of
E, but
1 1
2, 0 + 1 − 0, −2 = 1, −1 doesn’t belong to the set E.
2 2

4 2 2 4

0.5 x1

and y  1

1.0

y  1  1  x 1.5

2.0

FIGURE 1.15: Union of convex sets

20 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

1.3 Functions of Several Variables

We refer the reader to any book of calculus [1], [3], [21], [23] for details on
the points introduced in this section.

Definition 1.3.1 A function f of n variables x1 , · · · , xn is a rule that

assigns to each n-vector x = (x1 , . . . , xn ) in the domain of f , denoted by
Df , a unique number f (x) = f (x1 , . . . , xn ).

Example 1. Formulas may be used to model problems from different fields.

– Linear function

f (x1 , . . . , xn ) = a1 x1 + a2 x2 + . . . + an xn .

– The body mass index is described by the function

w
B(w, h) =
h2
where w is the the weight in kilograms and h is the height measured in
meters.
– The distance of a point P (x, y, z) to a given point P0 (x0 , y0 , z0 ) is a
function of three variables

d(x, y, z) = (x − x0 )2 + (y − y0 )2 + (z − z0 )2 .

– The Cobb-Douglas function or the production function, describes the re-

lationship between the output: the product Q and the inputs: x1 , . . . , xn
(capital, labor, . . .) involved in the production process

Q(x1 , · · · , xn ) = Cxa1 1 xa2 2 . . . xann C, a1 , . . . , an are constants, C > 0.

– The electric potential function for two positive charges, one at (0, 1)
with twice the magnitude as the charge at (0, −1), is given by
2 1
ϕ(x, y) =  + .
x2 + (y − 1)2 x2 + (y + 1)2
 Introduction 21

Example 2. When given a formula of a function, first identify its domain of

definition before any other calculation.

The domains of definition of the functions given by the following formulas:

√ √ √
f (x) = x g(x, y) = x h(x, y, z) = x

are

Df = {x ∈ R/ x  0}

Dg = {(x, y) ∈ R2 / x  0} : the half plane bounded by the y axis,

including the axis and the points located in the 1st and 4th quadrants.

Dh = {(x, y, z) ∈ R3 / x  0} : the half space bounded by the plane yz,

including this plane and the points with positive 1st coordinates x  0.

The three domains Df , Dg , Dh are closed, convex, unbounded subsets of

R, R2 and R3 respectively; see Figure 1.16.

y
1.0

Dg : x  0 0.5

interval Df : x  0 x
1.0 0.5 0.5 1.0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

0.5

1.0
10 Dh : x  0
y 5

5

10
10

z
0

5

10

5
x

10

FIGURE 1.16: Domains of definition

22 Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space

Graphs and Level Curves

With the aid of monotony, and convexity, sketching the graph of a real
function is performed by plotting few points. This is not possible in the case
of dimension 3.
To get familiar with some sets in R3 , we describe the traces’ method used
for plotting graphs of functions of two variables. The method consists on
sketching the intersections of the graph (or surface) with well-chosen planes,
usually planes that are parallel to the coordinates planes:

xy-plane : z = 0 xz-plane : y = 0 yz-plane : x = 0.

These intersections are called traces.

Definition 1.3.2 The graph of a function f : x = (x1 , . . . , xn ) ∈ Df ⊂

Rn −→ z = f (x) ∈ R is the set

Gf = {(x, f (x)) ∈ Rn+1 : x ∈ Df }.

The set of points x in Rn satisfying f (x) = k is called a level surface of f .

When n = 2, a level surface f (x, y) = k is called level curve. It is the projection

of the trace Gf ∩[z = k] onto the xy-plane. Drawing level curves of f is another
way to picture the values of f .

The following examples illustrate how to proceed to graph some surfaces and
level curves.

Example 3. A cylinder is a surface that consists of all lines that are parallel
to a given line and that pass through a given plane curve.
Let
E = {(x, y, z), x = y 2 }.
The set E cannot be the graph of a function z = f (x, y) since (1, 1, z) ∈ E
for any z, and then (1, 1) would have an infinite number of images. However,
we can look at E as the graph of the function x = f (y, z) = y 2 . Moreover, we
have

E= {(x, y, z), x = y 2 , (x, y) ∈ R2 }.
z∈R
 Introduction 23

This means that any horizontal plane z = k (// to the xy plane) intersects the
graph in a curve with equation x = y 2 . So these horizontal traces E ∩ [z = k],
k ∈ R are parabolas. The graph is formed by taking the parabola x = y 2
in the xy-plane and moving it in the direction of the z-axis. The graph is a
parabolic cylinder as it can be seen as formed by parallel lines passing through
the parabola x = y 2 in the xy-plane (see Figure 1.17).
Note that for any k ∈ R, the level curve z = k is the parabola x = y 2 in the
xy plane.

z
traces
y
y
4

Level curve x  y2
2 x

x
4 2 2 4

2

4

2 graph x  y2
y 1

1

2
2

z
0

1

2
2
1
0
x
1

FIGURE 1.17: Parabolic cylinder

Example 4. An Elliptic Paraboloid, in its standard form, is the graph of

the function
x2 y2
f (x, y) = z = + with a > 0, b > 0.
a2 b2

The graph
  x2 y2 
Gf = (x, y, z), + = z
a2 b2
z∈[0,+∞)

x2 y2
can be seen as the union of ellipses + = k in the planes z = k, k  0.
a2 b2
By choosing the traces in Table 1.3, we can shape the graph in the space (see
Figure 1.18 for a = 2, b = 3):
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
dropped into a low hollow, and on top of the next small lift in the
plains he rode into three riders, one of whom was a woman.
Rock had keen eyes. Moreover, since that meeting with Elmer
Duffy he was acutely conscious of his newly acquired identity. Thus
he marked instantly the brands of the horses. Two were Maltese
Cross stock, the other, bestridden by a youth of twenty or less,
carried Nona Parke’s brand on his left shoulder. His rider was a blue-
eyed slender boy, with a smile that showed fine white teeth when he
laid his eyes on Rock.
“Hello, Doc, old boy,” he said. “How’s the ranch an’ the family and
everythin’?”
“Same as usual,” Rock answered genially. “What you expect?”
They had reined up, facing each other. The second man nodded
and grunted a brief, “Howdy.” The girl stared at Rock with frank
interest, as he lifted his hat. Her expression wasn’t lost on him. He
wondered if he were expected to know her well, in his assumed
identity. In the same breath he wondered if a more complete
contrast to Nona Parke could have materialized out of those silent
plains. She was a very beautiful creature, indeed. It was hot, and
she had taken off her hat to fan her face. Her hair was a tawny
yellow. A perfect mouth with a dimple at one corner fitted in a face
that would have been uncommon anywhere. Curiously, with that
yellow hair she had black eyebrows and eyelashes. And her eyes
were the deep blue, almost purple, of mountains far on the horizon.
To complete the picture more effectually her split riding skirt was of
green corduroy, and she sat atop of a saddle that was a masterpiece
of hand-carved leather, with hammered-silver trimmings. It was not
the first time Rock had seen the daughters of cattle kings heralding
their rank by the elaborate beauty of their gear. He made a lightning
guess at her identity and wondered why she was there, riding on
roundup. She seemed to know him, too. There was a curious sort of
expectancy about her that Rock wondered at.
However, he took all this in at a glance, in a breath. He said to the
boy on the Parke horse:
“Where’s the outfit?”
 “Back on White Springs, a coupla miles. You might as well come
along to camp with us, Doc. It’s time to eat, an’ you’re a long way
from home.”
“Guess I will.” Rock was indeed ready to approach any chuck
wagon thankfully. It was eleven, and he had breakfasted at five.
They swung their horses away in a lope, four abreast. What the
deuce was this Parke rider’s name, Rock wondered? He should have
been primed for this. Nona might have told him he would possibly
come across the Maltese Cross round-up. This must be her “rep.”
And he was likewise unprepared for the girl’s direct attack. Rock
rode on the outside, the girl next. She looked at him sidewise and
said without a smile, with even a trace of resentment:
“You must be awful busy these days. You haven’t wandered
around our way for over two weeks.”
“I’m working for a boss that don’t believe in holidays,” he parried.
“I’d pick an easier boss,” she said. “Nona never lets the grass grow
under anybody’s feet, that I’ve noticed. Sometimes I wish I had
some of her energetic style.”
“If you’re suffering from lack of ambish,” Rock said, merely to
make conversation, “how’d you get so far from home on a hot day?”
“Oh, Buck was in at the home ranch yesterday, and I rode back
with him. Took a notion to see the round-up. I think I’ll go home this
afternoon.”
“Say, where’d you get that ridin’ rig, Doc?” the young man asked.
He craned his neck, staring with real admiration, and again Rock felt
himself involved in a mesh of pretense which almost tempted him to
proclaim himself. But that, too, he evaded slightly. He did have a
good riding rig. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might occasion
comment. But this youth, of course, knew Doc Martin’s accustomed
gear probably as well as he knew his own. Naturally he would be
curious.
“Made a trade with a fellow the other day.”
Rock registered a mental note to cache Martin’s saddle, bridle, and
spurs as soon as he got home.
“I bet you gave him plenty to boot,” the boy said anxiously. “You
always were lucky. He musta been broke an’ needed the mazuma.”
“I expect he was,” Rock agreed.
Again the girl’s lips parted to speak, and again the boy
interrupted. Rock out of one corner of his eye detected a shade of
annoyance cross her alluring face. He wondered.
“How’s Nona an’ the kid?”
“Fine,” Rock informed him. “I left her riding down to Vieux’s after
that dark-complected nurse girl.”
“Are you going back home to-night?” the girl asked abruptly.
“I’d tell a man,” Rock said. “As soon as I do business with the
chuck pile, I’m riding. I’m supposed to be back by three, and I’ll
certainly have to burn the earth to make it.”
“You won’t lose your job if you don’t.”
“Well, if I do, I know where I can get another one,” Rock said
lightly. “But I aim to be on time.”
“Him lose his job!” the TL rider scoffed. “You couldn’t pry him lose
from that job with a crowbar. Now don’t shoot,” he begged in mock
fear. “You know you got a snap, compared to ridin’ round-up with
the Maltese Cross—or any other gosh-danged cow outfit. I’m goin’ to
put up a powerful strong talk to Nona to send you on beef round-up
this fall an’ let me be ranch boss for a rest.”
“You got my permission,” Rock said a little tartly. These
personalities irked him. “I’ll be tickled to death if you do.”
He didn’t know what there was in his words, or tone, perhaps, to
make the boy stare at him doubtfully, and the yellow-haired girl to
smile with a knowing twinkle in her eyes, as if she shared some
secret understanding with him.
By then they were loping swiftly into a saucerlike depression in the
plains, in the midst of which a large day herd grazed under the eye
of four riders, and the saddle bunch was a compact mass by the
round-up tents.
 Rock left his horse standing on the reins. The others turned their
mounts loose. The Cross riders were squatted about the chuck
wagon in tailor-fashion attitudes, loaded plates in their laps. Rock
followed the other three to the pile of dishes beside the row of
Dutch ovens in the cook’s domain. Some of the men looked up,
nodded and called him by name. And, as Rock turned the end of the
wagon, he came face to face with a man holding a cup of coffee in
one hand—a man who stared at him with a queer, bright glint in a
pair of agate-gray eyes, a look on his face which Rock interpreted as
sheer incredulity.
He was a tall man, a well-built, good-looking individual, somewhat
past thirty, Rock guessed. His clothing was rather better than the
average range man wore. Neither his size nor his looks nor his dress
escaped Rock’s scrutiny, but he was chiefly struck by that
momentary expression.
And the fellow knew Rock. He grunted: “Hello, Martin.”
“Hello,” Rock said indifferently. Then, as much on impulse as with
a definite purpose, he continued with a slight grin: “You seem kinda
surprised to see me.”
Again that bright glint in the eyes, and a flash of color surged up
under the tan, as if the words stirred him. Rock didn’t stop to pry
into that peculiar manifestation of a disturbed ego. He was hungry.
Also, he was sensible and reasonably cautious. He felt some
undercurrent of feeling that had to do with Doc Martin. Between the
vivacious blonde and this brow-wrinkling stockman, Rock surmised
that posing as Doc could easily involve him in far more than he had
bargained for.

So he filled his plate and busied himself with his food. No one tarried
to converse. As each rider finished eating, he arose, roped a fresh
horse out of the remuda, and saddled. The girl and the other two
riders ate in silence. From the corner of one eye Rock could see the
girl occasionally glance at him, as if she were curious or tentatively
expectant. He couldn’t tell what was in her mind. He was going it
blind. He didn’t know a soul whom he was supposed to know. That
amused him a little—troubled him a little. The quicker he got on his
way the better. He had got a little information out of this visit,
though. He heard one of the riders address the big, well-dressed
man as “Buck.” He heard him issue crisp orders about relieving the
day herders. Old Uncle Bill Sayre’s words floated through his mind:
“Buck Walters is young, ambitious and high-handed with men an’
fond of women. He dresses flash. A smart cowman.”
That was Buck Walters, the range-functioning executor of the
Maltese Cross estate. And there was some distaste in Buck Walters
for Doc Martin. More wheels within wheels. Rock wondered if this
tawny-haired girl could be the daughter of the deceased Snell.
Probably. That didn’t matter. But it might matter a good deal to him
if there was any occasion for bad blood between Walters and the
dead man into whose boots he, Rock, had stepped.
He finished and rose.
“Well, people,” said Rock, “I’ll be like the beggar, eat and run. I
have a long way to go.”
“Tell Nona to ride over to see me,” the girl said politely, but with
no particular warmth. “I’ll be at the ranch most of the summer.”
“Sure,” Rock said laconically. “So long.”
He was a trifle relieved when he got clear of that camp. He had
plenty of food for thought, as he covered the miles between White
Springs and the Marias. Stepping out of his own boots into those of
a dead man seemed to have potential complications. When Rock
pulled up on the brink of the valley, he had just about made up his
mind that he would be himself. Or, he reflected, he could turn his
back on Nona Parke and the TL, and the curious atmosphere of
mystery that seemed to envelope that ranch on the Marias. He was
a capable stock hand. He could probably work for the Maltese Cross
and learn all he wanted to know under his own name. Why burden
himself with a dead man’s feud, even if the dead man might have
been his brother?
As far as Nona Parke went, one rider was as good as another to
her. And Rock had no intention of remaining always merely a good
stock hand. Other men had started at the bottom and gained
independence. No reason why he should not do the same. Land and
cattle were substantial possessions. Cattle could be bought. From a
small nucleus they grew and multiplied. Land could be had here in
the Northwest for the taking. Why should he commit himself to a
dead man’s feuds and a haughty young woman’s personal interests?
For a monthly wage? He could get that anywhere. He could probably
go to work for the Maltese Cross, without question and in his own
identity.
Rock, looking from the high rim down on the silver band of the
Marias, on the weather-bleached log buildings, asked himself why he
should not ride this range and fulfill his promise to an uneasy man in
Texas in his own fashion? Why shouldn’t he work for some outfit
where there were neither women to complicate life, nor enemies
save such as he might make for himself?
The answer to that, he decided at last, must be that one job was
as good as another, and that somehow, for all her passionate
independence, Nona Parke needed him. There was a peculiar
persuasiveness about that imperious young woman. Rock could
easily understand why men fell in love with her, desired her greatly,
and were moved to serve her if they could. She seemed to generate
that sort of impulse in a man’s breast. Rock felt it; knew he felt it,
without any trace of sentimentalism involved. He could smile at the
idea of being in love with her. Yet some time he might be. He was no
different from other men. She had made a profound impression on
him. He knew that and did not attempt to shut his eyes to the truth.
All these things, sinister and puzzling, of which her dead rider
seemed the focus, might be of little consequence, after all. As far as
he was concerned, every one simply insisted on taking him for a
man who was dead. That had a comical aspect to Rock.

He stared with a speculative interest at the Parke ranch lying in the

sunlight beside that shining river. Nona Parke had the right idea. She
had the pick of a beautiful valley, eight hundred cattle, and the
brains and equipment to handle them. That outfit would make a
fortune for her and Betty. Yet it was a man’s job.
 “She’s an up-and-coming little devil,” Rock said to himself. “Mind
like a steel trap. Hard as nails. A man would never be anything more
than an incident to her.”
Thus Rock unconsciously safeguarded his emotions against
disaster. He was neither a fool nor a fish. He liked Nona Parke. He
had liked her the moment he looked into the gray pools of her
troubled eyes. But he wouldn’t like her too well. No; that would be
unwise. She had warned him. But he could work for her. Her wages
were as good as any—better, indeed, by ten dollars a month. And if
there should be trouble in the offing—— Rock shrugged his
shoulders. Bridge crossing in due time.
A moon-faced, dark-haired girl of sixteen was puttering around in
the kitchen when Rock walked up to the house. Betty came flying to
meet him, and Rock swung her to the ceiling two or three times,
while she shrieked exultantly.
“Where’s Miss Parke?” he asked the half-breed girl.
“Workin’ in the garden.”
“Where the dickens is the garden?” Rock thought, but he didn’t
ask. He went forth to see.
Ultimately he found it, by skirting the brushy bank of the river to
the westward beyond the spring. Its overflow watered a plot of half
an acre, fenced and cultivated. Rich black loam bore patches of
vegetables, all the staple varieties, a few watermelon vines, and
cornstalks as tall as a man. In the middle of this, Nona was on her
knees, stripping green peas off a tangle of vines.
“Did Mary give you your dinner?” she asked.
“I struck the Maltese Cross round-up about eleven and ate with
them,” he told her.
“Oh! Did you see Charlie Shaw?” she asked. “Did he say whether
they picked up much of my stuff on Milk River?”
“Charlie Shaw is the name of that kid riding for you, eh? Well, I
saw him, but he didn’t say much about cattle. And I didn’t ask. I had
to step soft around that outfit. I don’t know any of these fellows,
you see, and they all persist in taking me for Doc Martin. I suppose
I’d have a deuce of a time persuading anybody around here that I
wasn’t.”
“It’s funny. I keep thinking of you as Doc, myself. You’re really
quite different, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t
think of Doc as being dead. Yet he is.”
“Very much so,” Rock answered dryly. “And I’m myself, alive, and I
wish to stay so. I’ve been wondering if posing as your man, Doc, is,
after all, a wise thing for me to do. What do you think?”
“You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure Elmer Duffy would
be relieved to know you aren’t Doc Martin.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rock mused. “Elmer might have just as
much to brood over if he knew who I really am.”
“Why so?” she asked point-blank.
Rock didn’t question the impulse to tell her. His instinct to be
himself was strong. The pose he had taken with Duffy that morning
had arisen from mixed motives. He wasn’t sure he wanted to carry
on along those lines. And he most assuredly didn’t want Nona Parke
to think him actuated by any quixotic idea of functioning as her
protector after her declarations on that subject.

So he told her concisely why Elmer Duffy might think a feud with
Rock Holloway a sacred duty to a dead brother. Nona looked at him
with wondering eyes and an expression on her face that troubled
Rock, and finally moved him to protest.
“Hang it,” he said irritably. “You needn’t look as if I’d confessed to
some diabolical murder. Mark Duffy was as hard as they make ’em.
He was running it rough on an inoffensive little man who happens to
be my friend. I had to interfere. And Mark knew I’d interfere. He
brought it on himself. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed me.
That’s what he was looking for.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” she said earnestly. “Of course,
you were quite justified. I was just thinking that this explains why
Elmer always hated Doc. Doc told me so. He felt it. I suppose it was
the resemblance. I don’t see, now, so far as trouble with Elmer is
concerned, that it matters much whether you pass as yourself or
Doc Martin. You’d have to watch out for Elmer Duffy in either case. I
couldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw a bull by the tail.”
“Nice estimate of a man that’s in love with you,” Rock chuckled.
“You’re a little bit afraid of Elmer, aren’t you?”
“No,” she declared. “But he’s brutal at heart. He’s the kind that
broods on little things till they get big in his own mind. He would do
anything he wanted if he was sure he could get away with it. And he
would like to run both me and my ranch.”
“Powerful description,” Rock commented. “Still it sort of fits Elmer
—all the Duffys, more or less. They’re inclined to be more aggressive
than they ought. Well, I guess it doesn’t make much difference if I
do pass as Doc. I’m not trying to put anything over on anybody
doing that. Now——”
He went on to tell her about meeting the girl at the Maltese Cross.
He described the man who had glared at him and puzzled him by his
attitude, but he didn’t tell Nona this latter detail. He merely wanted
to know who was who.
“That was Buck Walters, range foreman of the Maltese Cross,” she
confirmed Rock’s guess.
“Did Doc Martin ever have any sort of run-in with him?” he asked.
“Heavens, no! I would certainly have heard of it if he had. Why?”
“Oh, he seemed rather stand-offish, that’s all,” Rock answered
indifferently.
“Buck thinks rather highly of himself,” Nona told him. “He’s in
charge of a big outfit. The Maltese Cross is an estate, and he is one
of the administrators. He’s pretty high-handed. There are men in this
country who don’t like him much. But I don’t think Doc cared two
whoops, one way or the other. Probably Buck was thinking about
something.”
“Very likely. And who is the yellow-haired dulce?”
“Alice Snell. She and a brother inherit the whole Maltese Cross
outfit when the boy comes of age.”
“She told me to tell you to ride down to see her—that she’d be at
the ranch all summer.” Thus Rock delivered the message. “I didn’t
hardly know what she was talking about.”
 “Alice never does talk about anything much, although she talks a
lot,” Nona said coolly. “Her long suit is getting lots of attention.”
“Well, I expect she gets it,” Rock ventured. “She’s good looking.
Heiress to a fortune in cows. She ought to be popular.”
“She is,” Nona said—“especially with Buck Walters.”
“Oh! And is Buck popular with her?” Rock asked with more than
mere curiosity. This was an item that might be useful in the task of
sizing up Buck Walters and his way with the Maltese Cross.
“She detests him, so she says,” Nona murmured.
“Then why does she stick around up here in this forsaken country,
when she doesn’t have to?”
“You might ask her,” Nona replied.
Rock had squatted on his heels, picking pods off the vines and
chucking them by handfuls into the pan.
“I might, at that,” he agreed, “when I have a chance.”
“Alice is very ornamental,” Nona Parke continued thoughtfully. “But
quite useless, except to look at. She gives me a pain sometimes,
although I like her well enough.”
“You’re not very hard to look at yourself, it happens,” Rock told her
deliberately. “And I don’t suppose you object to being ornamental as
well as very useful and practical.”
Nona looked at him critically.
“Don’t be silly,” she warned.
“Don’t intend to be.” Rock grinned. “I never did take life very
seriously. I sure don’t aspire to begin the minute I find myself
working for you. I’m a poor but honest youth, with my way to make
in the world. Is it silly for a man to admire a woman—any woman?”
“I wish you’d pull those weeds out of that lettuce patch,” she said,
changing the subject abruptly. “They grow so quickly. I’m always at
these infernal weeds. After you get that done, roll up your bed and
bring it to the house. There’s lots of room.”

Rock performed the weeding in half an hour. If another had asked

him to do that, he would probably have told him to go hire a
gardener, he reflected.
“She’ll have me baking bread and working the churn next,” he
chuckled to himself. “Trust Miss Nona Parke to get her money’s
worth out of the hired man.”
That was an exaggeration. Nona wasn’t a driver. Within a week
Rock found himself doing various jobs about the ranch because he
saw that they needed doing, not because she told him to do them.
He rode more or less every day, and most of the time Nona rode
with him. It was easier, if less exciting and glamorous, than round-
up. He had a comfortable bed in a big room, with a huge stone
fireplace, which had been the bunk room when the TL had a dozen
riders and cattle by the thousand. Between Nona and the half-breed
girl, the vegetable garden and the two milch cows, Rock ate better
food than had fallen to his lot since he was at school on the Atlantic
seaboard.
It was pleasant to live there, pleasant to ride range with this dark-
haired, competent young person, who could be brusque and curt
when she chose, and self-sufficient at all times. They went clattering
away from the ranch in the cool of morning. They combed far coulee
heads, hidden springs, river bottoms above and below the ranch.
Rock was never quite sure what the girl looked for in these long
rides. The only actual stock work they did was to throw back
straggling bunches that grazed beyond certain limits. That, as Rock
understood the range business, was not important. He concluded
that Nona simply had a passion for looking over her possessions. He
had seen men like that—men who owned longhorns by the tens of
thousands.
But she seemed to be looking for something. Rock merely
surmised that. For a week after he happened on the Maltese Cross,
they covered the surrounding country, day by day. Nona talked very
little. She rode like a man, easily, carelessly, a component part of her
mount. She could handle a rope with fair skill. There was strength in
her slender arms, an amazing endurance in her slim body. She knew
her stock, bunch by bunch— leader cows and oddly marked bulls.
She knew where to find certain little herds. It was as if she watched
over them jealously, as a miser gloats over his hoard. There was
something in that Rock couldn’t fathom. Branded cattle on a
recognized range were safer than bonds in a steel safe, as a rule.
Sometimes there were exceptions to that rule. If there was such an
exception here, Nona never breathed it, and the riders of a cow
outfit were usually the first to be warned if there was any suspicion
of rustling in the air. And Rock would not ask. But he wondered. He
began to grow a little uneasy, too. He had accepted pay from Uncle
Bill Sayre to secure certain information. He was on the ground, but
he was not learning much about the Maltese Cross and Buck
Walters. He had grown personally curious about Buck Walters, too,
since meeting him. He didn’t like the man. Rock wasn’t given to
sudden likes and dislikes. Nevertheless, on that one eye-to-eye clash
he disliked Buck Walters—a much more active feeling than he could
muster up either for or against Elmer Duffy, for instance.
Rock had plenty of time for these mental conjectures. They were
like mariners stranded on an island in midocean—himself, Nona
Parke, the half-breed girl, and Baby Betty. No riders passed. Elmer
Duffy did not come again. The sun rose, swung in a hot arc across a
sapphire sky, and sank behind the far-off Rockies. They rode, rested,
and slept, while the stars twinkled in a cool canopy, and the frogs
along the Marias croaked antiphony to the soprano of a myriad of
unseen crickets in the grass.
Then one day Rock rode alone on the benches to the North. When
he splashed through the shallows and came to the corrals late in the
afternoon, there was a bay horse in the stable, and Charlie Shaw sat
talking to Nona in the shade of the porch.
 CHAPTER VIII—GETTING DOWN TO CASES
Under his ready laugh and effervescent smile, Charlie Shaw gave the
impression of entire competence. The downright self-reliance
demanded by the range of all who would pass muster in its service,
was quite apparent to Rock. In a cow camp a man was judged by
the way he carried himself, and what he could do, rather than his
years. Charlie had been giving Nona an account of things on round-
up. Apparently he had just ridden in. He nodded to Rock and went
on with his talk. Rock sat down beside them to roll a cigarette.
“I know within a dozen head how many unbranded calves are
scattered around here,” Nona said finally. “We had an open winter.
We should have at least seventy or eighty more calves than last year.
Yet the tally is less.”
“The range is covered to the last fringe,” Charlie stated. “They’ll
make a few more rides, but they won’t show much. I don’t savvy it
either, Nona, but that’s the count.”
“How did the Cross come out on their calf crop?” she inquired.
“Nobody knows but Buck. I wouldn’t ask him.”
The girl stared at the porch floor for a second, frowning.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “There ought to be more calves
than that.”
Charlie didn’t comment. After a minute she got up and went
inside. Shaw looked at Rock smoking in silence.
“Say, old-timer,” he remarked abruptly, but in a discreet
undertone, “there’s some whisperin’ about you in the Maltese Cross
outfit.”
“Yes?” Rock became alert. “What do they whisper? And who’s
whispering?”
“I don’t know who started it,” Charlie said. “I heard it the first day
you rode in with me and Alice Snell and Joe Bishop. I don’t like to
repeat gabble, but seems to me you’d ought know.”
“Shoot!” Rock smiled.
“It’s just a whisper,” Charlie mumbled seriously. “Nobody said a
word to me direct. I just overheard here and there. They say you’re
rustlin’.”
“Me—rustling?” Rock perked up in astonishment. For the moment
he forgot his assumed identity. The idea was so utterly ludicrous. He
laughed. Recollection sobered him. This must be more Martin
history.
“Ye’ah. Got you hooked up with them Burris boys over behind the
Goosebill,” Charlie murmured. “Talkin’ about rawhide neckties. Some
of them Texicans in Buck’s crew are bad hombres, Doc.”
Rock knitted his brows. He hadn’t heard before of the Burris boys.
The Goosebill he had seen only as an oddshaped hill standing blue
on the southwestern sky line, halfway between the Marias and Fort
Benton.
“Well, you reckon I’ve been draggin’ the long rope in my spare
time and should be a candidate for their kind attentions?” he asked.
Shaw snorted.
“I might ’a’ known you’d make a joke of it,” he complained.
“I wonder who wants to get me so bad as that?” Rock said under
his breath.
“Buck Walters, of course,” Charlie returned promptly. “Who else?
Just like his damn left-hand ways. Didn’t you never figure he’d shoot
at you over somebody else’s shoulder? As a matter of fact, I’m
satisfied Buck aims to get you.”
“Why?”
“Say, you know why well enough,” Charlie blurted irritably. “You
been flirtin’ with the undertaker all spring. You ain’t a fool.”
“You mean Alice Snell?” Rock hazarded a guess.
“Sure.” Charlie looked at him out of narrowed eyes, the bright blue
of which held a peculiar gleam, whether of friendship or disapproval
Rock could not tell from the boy’s otherwise impassive face. No; not
disapproval; merely the recollection of something unpleasant, either
in the past or threatening in the future. This capable youngster was
by no means an open book. “I wouldn’t yeep, only to give you a hint
to step soft. Buck’s mean. He’ll make trouble. Nona’s had a hard
enough row to hoe. Long as we draw wages from her, we got to do
the best we can for her. The TL ain’t so popular as it used to be with
the Maltese Cross.”
“Account of me?” Rock inquired.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said frankly. “I’ve told you all I know. That
talk about rustlin’ an’ hangin’ parties was meant for me to hear.
Savvy?”

Rock didn’t, but he nodded. His brows wrinkled deeply. The solution
finally came to him. To make a decision with him was to act.
“Do you recollect asking me where I got that riding rig?” he asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Meantime I want to show you
something.” He rose. “Come on in!”
Charlie followed him into the kitchen.
“Will you open up that room?” Rock asked Nona. “The one where
that stuff is we put away?”
“Why——” She stopped short. Something on the faces of the two
men checked the question on her lips. Silently she took a key out of
a drawer and walked into the hall, the narrow passage that divided
the house. She opened a door—the only locked door in all those log-
walled rooms.
“You better come in,” Rock said.
“Charlie’s got to know. You better tell him.”
A window from the south let sunlight into the room. A bed long
unslept in stood against one wall. On the floor lay a saddle, bridle, a
pair of black, Angora-faced chaps, and a pair of silver-inlaid spurs.
Beside them a pair of worn riding boots, a brown calfskin belt full of
.45 cartridges, and in the holster a plain, black-handled Colt. On a
nail above hung a man’s felt hat. A canvas war bag lay across a
chair, stuffed with the dead man’s belongings.
 Rock pointed to the saddle. On the yellow leather a stain lay black
like dried paint.
“Do you know that rig?” he asked. “Do you see that smear? That’s
blood.”
“Well?” The boy looked at the dead man’s outfit in puzzled
wonder. He looked at Nona Parke and back again at Rock. “Well?” he
repeated. “I see it. What’s it all about?”
“Am I Doc Martin or not?” Rock asked softly.
“Are you crazy?” Charlie demanded. “What are you getting at?
Who do you think you are? Have you gone loco?”
“Tell him,” Rock commanded the girl.
“Doc is dead,” she whispered. “He was shot from ambush a week
ago yesterday.”
Nona Parke’s cowpuncher looked at her unbelievingly. She gave
him details, chapter and verse, describing that tragic afternoon,
Rock’s coming, and the burial at sunrise.
“That’s all,” she said wearily. “You can see his grave beside dad
and mamma.”
“Poor old Doc,” Shaw muttered. He looked at Rock with new
interest. “I wouldn’t ’a’ believed it if she hadn’t told me. You’re the
dead spit of him. You talk like him. Only, you seemed a little
different, some way, from what Doc used to be.”
“Come on into the bunk room,” Rock invited. “Let’s try to get down
to cases.”
“Has anything happened?” Nona asked sharply.
“Gosh, no,” Rock equivocated. “Nothing at all. I wanted this kid to
know how things stand, though. I couldn’t go on and not tip my
hand, for fear he’d think there was something queer about me.”
“Probably it’s best,” Nona agreed. “Supper will be ready in a few
minutes. Charlie has to ride back to the round-up. I’ll call you.”
“All right.”

They turned out of the hall into the huge room where Rock slept.
Side by side, they sat on a bed that seemed lost in that empty
space, where forgotten riders had clanked their spurs and joked and
told stories through long winter nights, while the fireplace roared.
“Now you see where I stand,” Rock said. “I’m having a dead man’s
troubles wished on me. Tell me just how Doc Martin stood with Alice
Snell, and why Buck Walters had his knife out for Doc.”
“That’s simple,” the boy answered. “This blond dulce was soft on
Doc—crazy about him. I don’t blame you. Darn it, I keep thinkin’ of
you as Doc Martin. I can’t get it that he’s cashed in.”
“You can see how hard it is for me to make any one believe I’m
not Doc,” Rock observed.
“Hell, yes. They’d have to have it proved. They’d laugh and think
you were trying to put it over ’em.”
“Were you and Doc friends?” Rock asked. He wanted to know
where this boy stood.
“I liked Doc,” the boy said simply. “He showed me lots of things.
He was kinda high-handed with anybody he didn’t like. But he was
darned good to me. Doc was a white man.”
“No chance of him being mixed up in anything underhanded?”
Charlie Shaw snorted disdainfully, which was explicit enough
answer for Rock.
“Go on, tell me about Alice Snell and Doc—and Buck Walters,” he
prompted.
“Buck’s the fly in the ointment.” Charlie frowned. “As I said, I don’t
blame Doc for playin’ up to Alice. She’s a mighty sweet-lookin’ girl.
Only——”
“I gathered somehow,” Rock filled in the pause, “that the late Doc
was pretty sweet on Nona Parke. So much so, that he was jealous of
any man that paid her much attention, and that he got himself in
wrong with Elmer Duffy over that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But Nona don’t want nothin’ of a man except
that he be a good stock hand around her outfit. Sure, Doc thought a
heap of her. So do I. But not the way he did. Even if he got to
consolin’ hisself with Alice, I expect he still felt like protectin’ Nona
from fellers like Duffy. Elmer ain’t such a much. I’d be inclined to
horn off fellers like Duffy, myself. An’ I’m not stuck on Nona. Me ’n’
Doc worked for her two years, off ’n’ on. She’s been like a sister to
me. She’s game as they make ’em. Darned few girls would have the
nerve to run this one-horse show the way she’s done. I’d rather have
her for a boss than anybody I know.”
There was a sincerity in this stumbling, embarrassed declaration
that Rock admired. But he was still on the trail of the unknown, and
he quizzed Shaw further.
“This Snell girl’s of age. She’s rich. I guess she’s been spoiled.
Always had her own way about anythin’. She come up here last
summer, first time. Come back again this spring. Took a dickens of a
shine to Doc and didn’t hide it much. Everybody in the country
knows it, except Nona. She ain’t got eyes nor ears for anything but
her ranch and her cattle. An’ Buck Walters is crazy about this Snell
girl, himself, though she has no use for him. She told Doc once that
she’d can Buck off the Maltese Cross if her dad hadn’t made him an
administrator of his will. I don’t know if there was anythin’ definite
between Doc an’ Alice. I do know Buck has turned to hatin’ you—
Doc I mean—like poison, lately. His eyes burn whenever your name
comes up. That’s why I said he aims to get you—get Doc. Darn it, I
keep gettin’ you all mixed up.”
“Better go on thinkin’ of me as Doc Martin,” Rock suggested, “until
something breaks. I’m interested in this. Listen, now, Charlie: Do
you remember where the Maltese Cross was a week ago yesterday—
the day Doc was shot? Were they in easy reach of the Marias? Do
you recollect if Buck Walters was missing that afternoon?”
“I know where we were,” Charlie said. “Couldn’t say for sure
whether Buck was early or late off circle that afternoon. Anyhow, I’m
here to tell you that he wouldn’t be likely to do his own
bushwhackin’. Too foxy for that. He’s got at least half a dozen riders
in his outfit that’d kill a man for two bits—especially if Buck told ’em
to.”
“Got something on ’em, I suppose,” Rock suggested.
“Maybe; I don’t know. I know he’s got some hard citizens in his
crew. None of ’em has made a crooked move since they come to
Montana, but they got ‘Killer’ written all over ’em. There’s two fellers
that never ride with the round-up. They hang around the home
ranch all the time, foolin’ with horses. They got a name down South.
A rider in Benton told me their history last fall.”
“I see. Buck Walters has a lot of hard pills on his pay roll.” Rock
nodded. “Not because they’re such good range hands, eh? Most
cowpunchers aren’t killers—not by choice or for money. Now, why do
you reckon he keeps men like that around, Charlie?”
But all Shaw could answer was a shake of his head and a
muttered, “Search me.”
“It would sort of seem as if Buck kept a crowd around that would
burn powder free and easy, if the play came up,” Rock mused.
“Consequently, he must expect something to break. What would it
likely be? A cow outfit don’t have to fight for nothin’ in this country.”
And again Charlie Shaw shook his blond, youthful head.
“He wouldn’t surround himself with bad men from Bitter Creek,
waiting for their night to howl, just to deal with Doc Martin for
shining up to a girl he has his mind on.”
“No; because he brought most of his crowd up from the South
with him,” Charlie answered. “But he’ll put your light out, just the
same, if he gets a good chance.”
“Doc Martin has already had his light put out,” Rock said.
“I keep forgettin’,” the boy muttered. “If I was you I’d advertise
that fact pronto. It ain’t healthy to be in Doc Martin’s shoes around
here.”
“I have a notion to fill ’em for a while, just to see what comes of
it,” Rock said slowly. “You’re sure Buck Walters had it in for Doc over
this girl—and nothing else?”
“Nothing else that I know of,” Shaw said.
Something in the boy’s tone made that denial unconvincing and
warned Rock that there was more in Charlie Shaw’s mind than he
would utter.
“Do you suppose there was something that Doc Martin knew or
had found out or suspected, that would make Buck want him out of
the way?”
 Shaw stared at Rock for a minute, as if trying to fathom his
purpose—as if he were suspicious of subtleties beyond his
understanding.
“I can’t answer for what Doc might have known. All I know is that
I’m a Parke rider, and I don’t aim to horn into nothin’ that don’t
concern me nor the outfit I ride for—nor my friends.”
“I’m a TL rider, too,” Rock said pointedly. “I aim to be as good a
hand, if not better, to the outfit I work for as any rider that ever
forked a cayuse. Even if you don’t know anything positive, Charlie,
you could tell me what you think about Buck Walters.”
“I might tell you when I know you better,” the boy said bluntly. “A
man that wags his tongue too free is a fool. I’ve told you what I
know. It ain’t important what I think.”
Rock gave him credit for a wisdom beyond his years and did not
press the matter. He had taken a liking to this slender, smiling youth.
Charlie was good stuff—that curious mixture of which all good range
men were made—loyalty, courage and a rude dignity. And he was
damnably efficient. The boy had an eye like an eagle and a
discerning, practical mind. He knew or suspected far more than he
would ever admit to any one he didn’t know inside out and could
trust implicitly. He would have told things to Doc Martin that he
would only reveal to Rock Holloway when Rock had demonstrated
that he was all wool and a yard wide.
Nona called them presently to supper. They ate, then smoked a
cigarette on the porch. Charlie Shaw strolled off to the stable,
mounted and rode away to rejoin the Maltese Cross. While Rock sat
on the edge of the porch, pondering on what he had learned, Nona
joined him. She leaned against a log pillar, looking absently out
across the river flats. Rock watched her. She was so young, so
utterly free from self-consciousness, so intent upon her own
purposes. Something about her warmed his heart. It wasn’t beauty,
as Alice Snell was beautiful. It was an air, an atmosphere, something
indefinable, subtle, but very powerful, like the invisible force in a bit
of bent steel that draws other bits of steel to itself.
 “I want you to take a wagon and go to Fort Benton to-morrow,”
she said abruptly, “and see if you can hire a couple of men for
haying. We’ve got to get up a couple of hundred tons of hay for next
winter.”
Rock smiled. He had been brooding over life and death, treachery
and broken faith, loyalty in unexpected phases, the mystery of
passion that bred hatred and bloody clashes. Nona had been
thinking of hay for her stock.
Each to his own thoughts. He envied her a little and admired her
for that simplicity, the directness of her faith and works. His own
mental groping and convolutions would have distressed her, no
doubt.
 CHAPTER IX—ORDERED SOUTH
By midforenoon Rock had the striking contour of the Goosebill
breaking the sky line far on his right. As the team jogged with
rattling wagon wheels on a trail that was no more than two shallow
ruts in the grassy plateau, his mind dwelt on the Burris boys—two
unsavory brothers, with a ranch in a tangle of ravines behind that
strange hump on the flat face of Montana. Charlie had sketched
them for his benefit. They were suspected and had been for some
time. They had a few cattle, and their herd seemed to increase more
rapidly than cows naturally breed. No mavericks—unbranded
yearlings; hence the property of whosoever first got his irons on
them—were ever found on their range. They were supposed to ride
with a long rope, lifting the odd calf here and there. It was only a
matter of time, Charlie declared, before some big outfit would deal
with them, as the feudal barons dealt with miscreants within their
demesnes.
And Doc Martin’s name was being coupled with these two in the
Maltese Cross camp. Rock’s lip curled. When a man with power in his
hands wanted another man out of the way, he would go to great
lengths. Rock had observed the workings of such sinister intent in
his native State. He kept thinking about Uncle Bill Sayre’s estimate of
Buck Walters.
He was still more or less revolving this in his mind, when he came
to the brow of the steep bank that slanted sharply down to Fort
Benton. This one-time seat of the Northwest Fur Company was the
oldest settlement in the Territory, a compact unit of adobe and log
and frame dwellings, when the first gold was found at Bannack and
Virginia City, and when the eager miners looted the treasure of Last
Chance Gulch. Still the head of navigation on the Missouri River, it
had become the pivotal point of the cow business in northern
Montana, which had supplanted gold, as gold had supplanted furs,
as a road to fortune.
A conglomeration of buildings stood by the bank of the wide, swift
river. Away southward loomed a mountain range. The Bear Paws
stood blue, fifty miles east. A ferry plied from shore to shore, for the
convenience of horsemen, teams and three-wagon freight outfits
hauling supplies to the Judith Basin. The Grand Union Hotel loomed
big in the town, a great square building in a patch of green grass,
set off from Main Street, the single street which formed the business
heart of the town. A singularly attractive spot, it had had its historic
day. Buffalo had swarmed in its dooryard not so long before. The
Blackfeet and the Crows had fought each other there and joined
forces to fight the white man. In the spring at high water the stern-
wheel steamers from St. Louis laid their flat bows against the clay
bank and unloaded enormous cargoes of goods. Otherwise, since
furs and gold no longer dominated the Northwest, Fort Benton lived
a placid, uneventful day-to-day existence, except when roundups
came that way, and the cowboys took the town.
Yet there was life in it. The exciting scenes of a decade earlier
arose on a small scale. And between these high lights business
flourished. The fort was the hub of a great area, in which herds and
settlers were taking root. It supported a permanent population of
two hundred or more, stores, saloons and the Grand Union, which
had housed miners, gamblers, military men, river pilots, rich and
enterprising fur dealers, and was now headquarters for the cattle
kings and their henchmen.
Rock put his team in a livery stable and registered at the Grand
Union. He sought the bar, his parched throat craving St. Louis beer
fresh off the ice.
In the doorway, between lobby and barroom, he halted to look.
Anywhere between the Rockies and the Mississippi, between the Rio
Grande and the Canada line, a range rider might meet a man whom
he knew. They were rolling stones, gathering moss in transit,
contrary to the proverb. And Rock was not disappointed, although it
would be wrong to say that he was pleased.
 For he saw two men whom he recognized. They leaned on the bar
at one end, deep in talk, glasses before them. They did not see him.
Their backs were toward the doorway in which he stood. Their eyes
were on each other, not on the broad mirror over the back bar,
which showed Rock their faces.
One was Buck Walters; the other was Dave Wells, the Texan boss
of the Wagon Wheel on Old Man River, north of the Canada line.
Rock drew back, unseen, sought a chair in the lobby, and sat
down, with some food for thought. Here were two men, each of
whom knew him quite well—one as Doc Martin, a Parke
cowpuncher; while the other had employed him for nine months in
his real identity. Fort Benton was small. He could not remain in that
town over the night without meeting both, face to face. Which
identity should he choose?

It did not take Rock long to decide. He rose and made for the bar.
This time he put his foot on the rail and made an inclusive sign to
the bartender, after the custom of the country.
There were other men in the bar now. Walters and Wells looked
up to see who was buying. A shadow, very faint, flitted across Buck
Walters’ face. He nodded, with a grunt. Wells grinned recognition
and stuck out his hand.
“You got the best of me,” Rock drawled. “But shake, anyway.”
“I’d know your hide on a fence in hell,” Wells declared. He was
jovial, and his eyes were bright. He had been hoisting quite a few,
Rock decided. Walters seemed coldly sober.
“Gosh, who do you think I am?” Rock asked. “Your long-lost
brother or something?”
“Why, you’re Rock Holloway, darn you!” Wells said bluntly. “I’d
ought to know you. I paid you off less’n a month ago. Course, if
you’re layin’ low for somethin’——” He paused significantly. Over his
shoulder Rock marked the surprised attention of Buck Walters.
“If that is so, I sure must have a double,” Rock said. “I been
drawin’ wages from the TL on the Marias River for goin’ on two
years, without a break. Does this Holloway fellow you speak of look
so much like me, stranger?”
Wells looked him up and down in silence.
“If you ain’t Rock Holloway, I’ll eat my hat,” he said deliberately.
“Let’s see a man eat a Stetson for once,” Rock said to the
manager of the Maltese Cross. “Tell him who I am.”
“Eat the hat, Dave,” Walters said. “This feller never rode for you—
not in this country. His name is Doc Martin. He rides for a lady
rancher on my range. I know him as well as I know you.”
Wells scratched his head.
“I need my sky piece to shed the rain,” he said mildly. “Maybe the
drinks are on me. If you ain’t the feller I think you are, you certainly
got a twin.”
“I never had no brothers,” Rock declared lightly and reached for
his glass. “Never heard of anybody that looked like me. Well, here’s
luck.”
That was that. He got away from the barroom in a few minutes.
Wells kept eying him. So did Walters. He felt that they were
discussing him in discreet undertones. They did not include him in
their conversation after that drink. Once out of there, Rock set about
his business. He had no desire to paint the town. He went seeking
casual labor. Luck rode with him. Within an hour he had located and
hired two men—the only two souls in Fort Benton, he discovered,
who needed jobs. He went back to the Grand Union for supper. In
the dining room he saw Wells and Walters still together, seated at a
table by themselves. He observed them later in the lobby, deep in
cushioned chairs, cigars jutting rakishly from their lips.
Early in the evening Rock went up to his room. He had left the
Marias at sunrise, and had jolted forty miles in a dead-axle wagon.
He would hit the trail early in the morning, with the hay diggers,
before they changed their mind and hired themselves to some one
else. He needed sleep.
But he couldn’t sleep. The imps of unrest propped his eyelids
open. An hour of wakefulness made him fretful. His mind questioned
ceaselessly. Could a man like Buck Walters deliberately set out to
destroy another man merely because he was a rival for a girl’s
capricious affection? It didn’t seem incentive enough. A man with as
much on his hands as Walters, could scarcely afford petty feuds like
that. Still——
Rock dressed again, drew on his boots, and tucked his gun inside
the waistband of his trousers. He would stroll around Fort Benton for
an hour or so. By that time he would be able to sleep.

A battery of lighted windows faced the Missouri. Saloons with quaint

names, “Last Chance,” “The Eldorado,” “Cowboy’s Retreat,” the
“Bucket of Blood.” They never closed. They were the day-and-night
clubs of frontier citizens. Business did not thrive in all at once. It
ebbed and flowed, as the tides of convivial fancy dictated. In one or
two the bartender polished glasses industriously, while house dealers
sat patiently playing solitaire on their idle gambling layouts. But in
others there were happy gatherings, with faro and poker and crap
games in full swing. Rock visited them all and chanced a dollar or
two here and there. Eventually he retraced his steps toward the
hotel.
In the glow of lamplight from the last saloon on the western end
of the row, just where he had to cross the street to the Grand Union,
sitting in its patch of grass and flanked by a few gnarly cottonwoods,
Rock met Buck Walters and Dave Wells.
He nodded and passed them. A little prickly sensation troubled the
back of his neck. It startled Rock, that involuntary sensation.
Nervous about showing his back to a potential enemy? Nothing less.
The realization almost amused Rock. Absurd! Nobody would shoot
him down on a lighted street. Yet it was a curious feeling.
Expectancy, a sense of danger, a conscious irritation at these
psychological absurdities. He was not surprised when a voice behind
him peremptorily called:
“Hey, Martin!”
He turned to see Buck Walters stalking toward him. Wells’ long,
thin figure showed plain in the glimmer of light. He stood on the
edge of the plank walk, staring at the river.
 “Got somethin’ to say to you,” Walters announced curtly.
“Shoot,” Rock answered in the same tone.
Walters faced him, six feet away. His face, so far as Rock could
see, told nothing. It was cold and impassive, like the face of a
gambler who has learned how to make his feature a serviceable
mask to hide what is in his mind. Buck’s face was unreadable, but
his words were plain.
“This country ain’t healthy for you no more, Martin.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell you it ain’t.”
“You’re telling me doesn’t make it so, does it?”
“I know. Talk’s cheap. But this talk will be made good. You need a
change of scenery. I’d go South if I was you—quick. You’ve been on
the Marias too long.”
“Why should I go South, if I don’t happen to want to?” Rock
asked.
“Because I tell you to.”
Rock laughed. For the moment he was himself, Doc Martin
forgotten, and he had never stepped aside an inch for any man in
his life.
“You go plumb to hell,” he said. “I’ll be on the Marias when you
are going down the road talking to yourself.”
“All right,” Buck told him very slowly. “This is the second time I’ve
warned you. You know what I mean. You’re huntin’ trouble. You’ll
get it.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rock retorted. “Say it in plain
English. What’s eating you?”
“I’ve said all I aimed to say,” Walters declared. “You know what I
mean, well enough.”
“If I had never laid eyes on you before,” Rock answered quietly,
“you have said enough right now to justify me in going after you. Is
that what you want? Do you want to lock horns with me? The light’s
good. Pop your whip, you skunk!”
 Rock spat the epithet at him in a cold, collected fury. He meant
precisely what he said. There was such an arrogant note in that cool
intimidation. It filled him with a contemptuous anger for Buck
Walters and all his ways and works and his veiled threats.
“You are just a little faster with a gun than I am,” Walters replied,
unruffled, the tempo of his voice unchanged. “I take no chances
with you. I am not afraid of you, but I have too much at stake to risk
it on gun play—by myself. If you do not leave this country, I will
have you put away. You can gamble on that.”
Rock took a single step toward him. Walters held both hands away
from his sides. He smiled.
“If you so much as make a motion for that gun in your pants,” he
said in an undertone, “my friend Dave Wells will kill you before you
get it out.”

Now Rock had made that step with the deliberate intention of
slapping Walters’ face. No Texan would take a blow and not
retaliate. He couldn’t live with himself if he did. But, “my friend,
Dave Wells,” made him hesitate. Rock’s glance marked Wells, twenty
feet away, a silent watchful figure. And it was more than a mere
personal matter. Down in Fort Worth, Uncle Bill Sayre had joint
responsibility with this man for the safeguarding of a fortune, and a
medley of queer conclusions were leaping into Rock’s agile brain.
Reason, logic, evidence—all are excellent tools. Sometimes instinct
or intuition, something more subtle than conscious intellectual
processes, short-circuits and illuminates the truth with a mysterious
flash of light. This man before him was afraid of Doc Martin. He was
afraid of Doc, over and above any desire for possession of a woman
—any passion of jealousy. There was too much at stake, he had
said. Rock would have given much to know just what Buck Walters
meant by the phrase. Doc Martin would have known. Rock didn’t
regret the surge of his own temper—the insult and challenge he had
flung in this man’s teeth. But he fell back on craft.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d expect you to take no chance on an even
break, with anybody or about anything. You’ll play safe. You’ll pass
the word that I’m to be put away. You tried it already.”
“Next time there will be no slip-up,” Walters answered with cold
determination. “You have said things you shouldn’t have said. You
have shot off your mouth at me. You have made a play at a fool of a
girl that I aim to have for myself. I have a cinch, Martin, and I am
goin’ to play it for all it is worth.”
“A cinch on me—or on the Maltese Cross?” Rock taunted.
“Both,” Walters muttered, in a whisper like a hiss, the first emotion
that had crept into his cold, malevolent voice.
“That’s a damaging admission to make,” Rock sneered.
“Not to you,” Walters said flatly. “You’ll never have a chance to use
it. You are goin’ to be snuffed out, if you don’t pull out. I don’t like
you, for one thing; you are interferin’ with my plans, for another.”
“Those are pretty strong words, Buck,” Rock told him soberly. “I’m
not an easy man to get away with.” He tried a new tack. “If you are
so dead anxious to get rid of me, why don’t you try making it worth
my while to remove myself?”
Walters stared at him.
“I ain’t buyin’ you,” he said at last. “There’s a cheaper way.”
“All right, turn your wolf loose on me.” Rock laughed. “See what’ll
happen. Now you run along, Mister Buck Walters, before I shoot an
eye out of you for luck, you dirty scoundrel!”
Rock’s anger burned anew, but he did not on that account lose his
head. He abused Walters in a penetrating undertone, with malice,
with intent, with venom that was partly real, partly simulated. But he
might as well have offered abuse and insult to a stone. He could not
stir Walters to any declaration, any admission that would have been
a key to what Rock sought.
“Talk is cheap. I don’t care what you say. It don’t hurt me,” the
Maltese Cross boss told him stiffly. “I will shut your mouth for good,
inside of forty-eight hours.”
And with that he turned his back squarely on Rock and walked to
rejoin his friend, Dave Wells, who stood there, ready to shoot in the
name of friendship.
 Rock stood staring at their twin backs sauntering past lighted
saloons. He wouldn’t have turned his back on Walters, after that.
Which was a measure of his appraisal of the man’s intent. Buck
would make that threat good!
Rock shrugged his shoulders and strolled across the dusty street
into the Grand Union. He was little the wiser for that encounter,
except that he could look for reprisal, swift and deadly. He wondered
calmly what form it would take.
Certainly he had stepped into a hornet’s nest when he stepped
into the dead cowpuncher’s boots. Rock lay down on his bed with his
clothes still on and stared up at the dusky ceiling. He was trying to
put one and one together, to make a logical sum. It made no
difference now, whether he was Doc Martin or Rock Holloway. After
to-night Buck Walters was an enemy. And Rock reflected
contemptuously that he would rather have him as an enemy than a
friend.
He recalled again Uncle Bill Sayre’s distrust of his fellow executor.
Uncle Bill’s instinct was sound, Rock felt sure in his own soul, now.
“I expect I am in for some exciting times,” Rock murmured to
himself. “Yes, sir, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookfinal.com