, seems like." He thumped the pillow into a different position,
settled his head against it, and looked at Mason with his old, whimsical
smile. "So when you talk about that foreman job, and depending on me,
you're--plumb delirious. I was going to write and tell you so, but I
kept putting it off. And then I took a notion I'd hunt you up and give
you some good advice. You're a good fellow, Ches, but the court ought to
appoint a guardian for you."

"I'll stick around for three or four weeks," Mason observed, in the
casual tone of one who is merely discussing the details of an everyday
affair, "till the calves are all gathered. We're a little late this
year, on account of old Slow dying right in round-up time. We got most
of the beef shipped--all I care about gathering, this fall. I've got
most all young stock, and it won't hurt to let 'em run another season;
there ain't many. I'll let you take the wagons out, and I'll go with you
till you get kinda harness-broke. And--"

"I told you I don't want the job." Ford's mouth was set grimly.

"You tried to tell me what I want and what I don't want," Mason
corrected amiably. "Now I've got my own ideas on that subject. This here
outfit belongs to me. I like to pick my men to suit myself; and if I
want a certain man for foreman, I guess I've got a right to hire him--if
he'll let himself be hired. I've picked my man. It don't make any
difference to me how many times he played hookey when he was a kid, or
how many men he's licked since he growed up. I've hired him to help run
the Double Cross, and run it right; and I ain't a bit afraid but what
he'll make good." He smiled and knocked the ashes gently from his pipe
into the palm of his hand, because the pipe was a meerschaum just
getting a fine, fawn coloring around the base of the bowl, and was dear
to the heart of him. "Down to the last, white chip," he added slowly,
"he'll make good. He ain't the kind of a man that will lay down on his
job." He got up and yawned, elaborately casual in his manner.

"You lay around and take it easy this afternoon," he said. "I've got to
jog over to the river field; the boys are over there, working a little
bunch we threw in yesterday. To-morrow we can ride around a little, and
kinda get the lay of the land. You better go by-low, right now--you look
as if it wouldn't do you any harm!" Whereupon he wisely took himself off
and left Ford alone.

The door he pulled shut after him closed upon a mental ba