"Well, what happened?" asked Grannis.

"What happened? The boss sent me dusting about forty miles to get some
hounds. Nearly spoiled a good team to get back inside sixteen hours,
and--they found out Bill here in the next thirty minutes, that was all!"
Once more the story ended in a grin.

"What'd Rankin say?" asked Grannis, with interest.

"How about it, Bill?" suggested Graham.

The big cowboy looked a trifle foolish.

"Oh, he didn't say much; 'tain't his way. He just remarked, sort of
off-hand, that as far as I was concerned the next year had only about
four pay-months in it. That was all."

* * * * *

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing at once. This was the
motto of the master of the Box R Ranch. In ten minutes' time Rankin's
big shapeless figure, seated in the old buckboard, was moving northwest
at the steady jog-trot typical of prairie travel, and which as the hours
pass by annihilates distance surprisingly. Simply a fat, an abnormally
fat, man, the casual observer would have said. It remained for those who
came in actual contact with him to learn the force beneath the
forbidding exterior,--the relentless bull-dog energy that had made him
dictator of the great ranch, and kept subordinate the restless, roving,
dissolute men-of-fortune he employed,--the deliberate and impartial