The milch cows were slowly mouching from the corrals as he neared the sheds.  A diminutive herder was urging them along with shrill, piping shrieks—­vicious but ineffective.  Far more to the purpose were the efforts to a well-trained, bob-tailed sheep dog who was awaking echoes on the brisk morning air with the full-toned note of his bark.

“Lord” Bill found one or two hands quietly enjoying their after-breakfast smoke, but the majority had not as yet left the kitchen.  Outside the barn two men were busily soft-soaping their saddles and bridles, whilst a third, seated on an upturned box, was wiping out his revolver with a coal-oil rag.  Bill passed them by with a nod and greeting, and went into the stable.  The horses were feeding, but as yet the stalls had not been cleaned out.  He returned and gave some instructions to one of the men.  Then he walked slowly back to the house.  Usually he would have stayed down there to see the work of the day carried out; now, however, he was preoccupied.  On this particular morning he took but little interest in the place; he knew only too well how soon it must pass from his possession.

Half-way up the hill he paused and turned his sleepy eyes towards the south.  At a considerable distance a vehicle was approaching at a spanking pace.  It was a buckboard, one of those sturdy conveyances built especially for light prairie transport.  As yet it was not sufficiently near for him to distinguish its occupant, but the speed and cut of the horses seemed familiar to him.  He continued on towards the house, and seated himself leisurely on the veranda, and, rolling himself another cigarette, calmly watched the on-coming conveyance.

It was the habit of this man never to be prodigal in the display of energy.  He usually sat when there was no need for standing; he always considered speech to be golden, but silence, to his way of thinking, was priceless.  And like most men of such opinion he cultivated thought and observation.

He propped his back against the veranda post, and, taking a deep inhalation from his cigarette, gazed long and earnestly, with half-closed eyes, down the winding southern trail.

His curiosity, if such a feeling might have been attributed to him, was soon set at rest, for, as the horses raced up the hill towards him, he had no difficulty in recognizing the bulky proportions of his visitor.  Seeing the driver of the buckboard making for the house, two of the “hands” had hastened up the hill to take the horses.  Lablache, for it was the fleshy money-lender, slid, as agilely as his great bulk would permit him, from the vehicle, and the two men took charge of the horses.  Bill was not altogether cordial.  It was not his way to be so to anybody but his friends.

“How are you?” he said with a nod, but without rising from his recumbent attitude.  “Goin’ to stay long?”

His latter question sounded churlish, but Lablache understood his meaning.  It was of the horses the rancher was thinking.