“We’ve got to brand a few yearlings that got by last round-up.  Bud said there was about fifteen of them.  You can ride over after you get settled and help cut ’em out.  What iron do you want to put on them?”

“Well, seein’ it’s me own brand, I reckon it will be like this:  A kind of half-circle for the sun, and a lot of little lines runnin’ out to show that it’s shinin’, and underneath a straight line meanin’ the earth, which is ’Sundown’—­me own brand.  Could Johnny make one like that?”

“I don’t know.  That’s a pretty big order.  You go over and tell Johnny what you want.  And I’ll send the buckboard over Saturday.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

IMPROVEMENTS

Out in a field bordered by the roadway a man toiled behind a disk-plough.  He trudged with seven-league strides along the furrows, disdaining to ride on the seat of the plough.  To effect a comfortable following of his operations he had lengthened the reins with clothes-line.  He drove a team of old and gentle white horses as wheelers.  His lead animals were mules, neither old nor gentle.  It is possible that this fact accounted for his being afoot.  He was arrayed in cowboy boots and chaps, a faded flannel shirt, and a Stetson.  Despite the fact that a year had passed since he had practically “Lochinvared” the most willing Anita,—­though with the full and joyous consent of her parents,—­he still clung to the habiliments of the cowboy, feeling that they offset the more or less menial requirements of tilling the soil.  Behind him trailed a lean, shaggy wolf-dog who nosed the furrows occasionally and dug for prairie-dogs with intermittent zest.

The toiler, too preoccupied with his ploughing to see more than his horses’ heads and the immediate unbroken territory before them, did not realize that a team had stopped out on the road and that a man had leaped from the buckboard and was standing at the fence.  Chance, however, saw the man, and, running to Sundown, whined.  Sundown pulled up his team and wiped his brow.  “Hurt your foot ag’in?” he queried.  “Nope?  Then what’s wrong?”

The man in the road called.

Sundown wheeled and stood with mouth open.  “It’s—­Gee Gosh!  It’s
Billy!”

He observed that a young and fashionably attired woman sat in the buckboard holding the team.  He fumbled at his shirt and buttoned it at the neck.  Then he swung his team around and started toward the fence.

Will Corliss, attired in a quiet-hued business suit, his cheeks healthfully pink and his eye clear, smiled as the lean one tied the team and stalked toward him.

Corliss held out his hand.  Sundown shook his head.  “Excuse me, Billy, but I ain’t shakin’ hands with you across no fence.”

And Sundown wormed his length between the wires and straightened up, extending a tanned and hairy paw.  “Shake, pardner!  Say, you’re lookin’ gorjus!”