"Twelve," supplemented Charming Billy. "Turned my first cow when I was
sixteen."

"So you must be perfectly familiar with the business. I frankly admit
that I am not familiar with it. You say you are at present out of
employment and so I am thinking seriously of offering you a position
myself, as confidential adviser if you like. I really need some
one who can accompany me about the country and keep me from such
deplorable blunders as was yesterday's experience. After I have bought
a place, I shall need some one who is familiar with the business and
will honestly work for my interests and assist me in the details until
I have myself gained a practical working-knowledge of it. I think I
can make such an arrangement to your advantage as well as my own. From
the start the salary would be what is usually paid to a foreman. What
do you say?"

For an appreciable space Charming Billy Boyle did not say a word. He
was not stupid and he saw in a flash all the possibilities that lay in
the offer. To be next the very top--to have his say in the running of
a model cow-outfit--and it should be a model outfit if he took charge,
for he had ideas of his own about how these things should be
done--to be foreman, with the right to "hire and fire" at his own
discretion--He turned, flushed and bright-eyed, to Dill.

"God knows why yuh cut _me_ out for the job," he said in a rather
astonished voice. "What you've seen uh me, so far, ain't been what
I'd call a gilt-edge recommend. But if you're fool enough to mean it
serious, it's as I told yuh a while back: Yuh can count on me till
they're cutting figure-eights all over hell."