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A glitter of mischief gleamed from the cattleman's eyes. "Meaning Harley, Waring?" "You know who I mean. I tell you she's an angel from heaven, pure as the driven snow." "And I tell you that I'll take your word for it without quarreling with you," was the goodhumored retort. "What's up, anyhow? I never saw you so touchy before. You're a regular pepper-box."
"Let's quit ranchin' till this trouble's settled," he declared. "Let's arm an' ride the trails an' meet these men half-way.... It won't help our side any to wait till you're shot in the back." More than one of Isbel's supporters offered the same advice. "No; we'll wait till we know for shore," was the stubborn cattleman's reply to all these promptings. "Know! Wal, hell!
The steak had been reduced to a meager rim before Andrew had any attention to pay to the paper which had been placed on his table. It was an eight-page sheet entitled The Granville Bugle, and a subhead announced that it was "the greatest paper on the ranges and the cattleman's guide."
A sheepman could throw a few thousand sheep round a cattleman's ranch and ruin him. The range was free. It was as fair for sheepmen to graze their herds anywhere as it was for cattlemen. This of course did not apply to the few acres of cultivated ground that a rancher could call his own; but very few cattle could have been raised on such limited area.
Few of these men wore coats; a great many of them carried single-action revolvers in holsters beside the thigh; the old-fashioned cattleman's boot was the predominant footgear; and, excepting among the faro-dealers, there was a rather general carelessness in sartorial matters.
The Old Cattleman's face was full of an earnest, fine sincerity. It was plain, too, that my question nettled the old fellow a bit; as might a doubt cast at an idol. But the sharpness had passed from his tone when he resumed "Not only is Jack long on sand that a-way, but he's plumb loaded with what you-alls calls 'nitiative.
The cattleman's clear grey eyes looked steadily from under his grizzly brows into the huckleberry optics of his guest. After a little he said simply, and not ungraciously, "I'll be much obliged to you, son, if you won't mention money any more. Once was quite a plenty. Folks I ask to my ranch don't have to pay anything, and they very scarcely ever offers it. Supper'll be ready in half an hour.
The cattleman's eyes were ice-cold. Hull swallowed a lump in his fat throat before he committed himself. "Well, it was." "Was between the two trips of the elevator, you mean?" "Yes." "Your wife heard this sound, too?" "Yep. We spoke of it afterward." "Do you know anything else that could possibly have had any bearing on my uncle's death?" "No, sir. Honest I don't."
Fendrick brought me," she explained when articulate expression was possible. "He brought you, did he?" Luck looked across her shoulder at his enemy, and his eyes grew hard as jade. "Of my own free will," she added. "I promised you a better argument than those I'd given you. Miss Cullison is that argument," Fendrick said. The cattleman's set face had a look more deadly than words.
"Straight hard work and minding your own business," her father had said, and it seemed to Lorraine after three or four days of it that he had summed up the life of a cattleman's daughter in a masterly manner which ought to be recorded among Famous Sayings like "War is hell" and "Don't give up the ship." On this particular morning Lorraine's spirits were at their lowest ebb.
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