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Updated: June 3, 2025
She had come, led by a sense of duty, not by affection, for she had never loved her mother as a daughter should they were in some way antipathetic and now she found herself an unwelcome guest. Then, too, the West had called to her: the West of her childhood, the romantic, chivalrous West, the West of the miner, the cattle-man, the wolf, and the eagle.
However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous with Lorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a reasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result. There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the appearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly. Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head.
Possibly the cattle-man felt that he was paying a tribute to the memory of his brother. In any event, he greeted Sundown next morning as the latter came to the water-hole to drink. "You can't lose your way," he said, pointing across the mesa. "Just keep to the road. The first ranch on the right is the Concho. Good luck!" And he led Chinook through the gateway. In an hour he had topped the hill.
When she passed the alley between the post-office and the carrier's she saw the cattle-man, Goodtart, looking out at her from its shadows; he did not move, but his dark brown eyes were more alive than she had ever seen them. A stranger stepped out of the inn and laughed so heartily that he had to loose his neckerchief.
To recognize the Indian ownership of the limitless prairies and forests of this continent that is, to consider the dozen squalid savages who hunted at long intervals over a territory of a thousand square miles as owning it outright necessarily implies a similar recognition of the claims of every white hunter, squatter, horse-thief, or wandering cattle-man.
We all went up to the front of the car and sat around the stove in which we kept up a bright fire, fortunately we had plenty of fuel and in such circumstances we speedily got acquainted with each other. One of the men was a "drummer," a travelling man for a notion house; another was a cow-boy; the third was a big cattle-man; and I was the last.
It was characteristic, however, of western life that his two cowboys, Hi Kendal and Bronco Bill, felt themselves quite his social equals, though in the presence of his beautiful, stately wife they confessed that they "rather weakened." Ashley was a thoroughly good fellow, well up to his work as a cattle-man, and too much of a gentleman to feel, much less assert, any superiority of station.
Then Glam waxed more mighty than ever; the cattle bellowed and roared, and gored each other; the byre cracked, and a cattle-man who had been long in Thorhall's service was found dead, his head in one stall and feet in another. None could go up the dale with horse or hound, because it was straightway slain, and it was no easy task to get servants to remain at the steading.
But the realization that he had voluntarily undertaken the care of them, and that the larger part of them belonged to his friends, put him in a passion of apprehension that, as a ranchman, was almost inexplicable. He did the very thing of all others that no cattle-man in his right senses would think of doing. Gillispie and Henderson, talking it over afterward, were never able to understand it.
"Come over, gentlemen," he invited, "and we'll celebrate this, the proudest moment of my life. You drink, of course, Mr. Blair?" Ben did not stir. "Thank you, but I never drink," he said. "What!" Sidwell smiled sceptically. "A cattle-man, and not refresh yourself with good liquor? You refute all the precedents! Come over and take something!" Ben only looked at him steadily.
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