United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had not dreamed that the Old Man would be capable of such an action, even with the latest and least-valued comer; he felt the sting of it, the injustice and the ingratitude for all the years he had given the Double-Crank. It seemed to him that he could never feel quite the same toward another outfit, or be content riding horses which bore some other brand.
He had done the best that was in him, and even now that it was over he could not quite understand how everything, everything could go like that; how the Double-Crank and Flora how the range, even, had slipped from him. And now Dill was gone, too, and he did not even know where, or if he would ever come back.
But even with the distraction of a holiday and a dance just about to start and the surrounding country emptied of humans into the town, the clatter of the Double-Crank outfit fifteen wiry young fellows hungry for play brought men to the doors and into the streets. Charming Billy, because his eagerness was spiced with expectancy, did not stop even for a drink, but made for the hotel.
Billy had "bached" a great deal, but he had never blacked a stove in his life. The foreman passed gloved fingers over his eyes, held them there a moment, took them away and gazed in amazement; since he had been foreman of the Double-Crank and the years were many Charming Billy Boyle had been one of its "top-hands," and he had never before caught him in the throes of "digging out."
It was the first storm of the season, and they told one another it would be the worst. The Double-Crank wagons were on the way in with a bunch of bawling calves and cows when it came, and they were forced to camp hastily in the shelter of a coulée till it was over, and to walk and lead their horses much of the time on guard that they might not freeze in the saddle.
Since the Double-Crank ranch lay with Burnt Willow Creek loitering through the willows within easy gunshot of the corrals, Billy's trail followed the creek except in its most irresponsible windings, when he would simplify his journey by taking straight as might be across the prairie.
After a year, those months of petty detail might be wiped out entirely without changing the general trend of events and such a time was the winter that saw "Dill and Bill," as one alliterative mind called them, in possession of the Double-Crank. The affairs of the ranch moved smoothly along toward a more systematic running than had been employed under Brown's ownership.
In the absorption of his own affairs he had not given the matter any thought, though he had wondered at first what crazy impulse caused Brown to sell the Double-Crank. Even now he did not know, and when he thought of it the thing irritated him like a puzzle before it is solved.
Do yuh know, Dilly, the range is just going t' be a death-trap, with all them damn fences for the stock to drift into. Another winter half as bad as the last one was will sure put the finishing touches to the Double-Crank unless we get busy and do something."
I should have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the West the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy who tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpably careless. "Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to me.
Word Of The Day