ou're extremely accurate."

"I ne'er miss," said the other, and proved it by disposing of the egg at
the next imposing mouthful.

"I should like to know you. My name is Anthony Bard."

"I'm Marty Wilkes. H'ware ye?"

They shook hands.

"Westerner, Mr. Wilkes?"

"This is my furthest East."

"Have a pleasant time?"

A gesture indicated the barren, brown waste of prairie.

"Too much civilization."

"Really?"

"Even the cattle got no fight in 'em." He added, "That sounds like I'm a
fighter. I ain't."

"Till you're stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?"

"Heat me up an' I'll burn. Soil wood."

"You're pretty familiar with the Western country?"

"I get around."

"Perhaps you'd recognize this."

He took a scroll from his breast pocket and unrolled the photograph of
the forest and the ranchhouse with the two mountains in the distance.
Wilkes considered it unperturbed.

"Them are the Little Brothers."

"Ah! Then all I have to do is to travel to the foot of the Little
Brothers?"

"No, about sixty miles from 'em." "Impossible! Why, the mountains almost
overhang that house."

Wilkes handed back the picture and resumed his eating without reply. It
was not a sullen resentment; it was hunger and a lack of curiosity. He
was not "heated up."

"Any one," said Anthony, to lure the other on, "could see that."

"Sure; any one with bad eyes."

"But how can you tell it's sixty miles?"

"I've been there."

"Well, at least the big tree there and the ranchhouse will not be very
hard to find. But I suppose I'll have to travel in a circle around the
Little Brothers, keeping a sixty-mile radius?"

"If you want to waste a pile of time. Yes."

"I suppose you could lead me right to the spot?"

"I could."

"How?"

"That's about fifty-five miles straight north-east of the Little
Brothers."

"How the devil can you tell that, man?"

"That ain't hard. They's a pretty steady north wind that blows in them
parts. It's cold and it's strong. Now when you been out there long
enough and get the idea that the only things that live is because God
loves 'em. Mostly it's jest plain sand and rock. The trees live because
they got protection from that north wind. Nature puts moss on 'em on the
north side to shelter 'em from that same wind. Look at that picture
close. You see that rough place on the side of that tree--jest a shadow
like the whiskers of a man that ain't shaved for a week? That's the
moss. Now if that's north, the rest is