“What time was it you saw that smoke, Grannis?” he asked.

The man addressed paused in the operation of rolling a cigarette.

“’Bout an hour ago, I should say.  I was just thinking of coming in to dinner.”

The lids met over Rankin’s eyes, then the narrow slit opened.

“It was in the no’thwest you say, and seemed to be quite a way off?”

Grannis nodded.

“Yes; I couldn’t make out any fire, only the smoke, and that didn’t last long.  I thought at first maybe it was a prairie fire, and started to see; but it was getting thinner before I’d gone a mile, so I turned round and by the time I got back to the corral there wasn’t nothing at all to see.”

Two of the other hands solemnly exchanged a wink.

“Think you must have eaten too many of Ma Graham’s pancakes this morning, and had a blur over your eyes,” commented one, slyly.  “Prairie fires don’t stop that sudden when the grass is like it is now.”

The portly housewife paused in her work to cast a look of scorn upon the speaker, but Grannis rushed into the breach.

“Don’t you believe it.  There was a fire all right.  Somebody stopped it, or it stopped itself, that’s all.”

Tilting his chair forward with an effort, Rankin got to his feet, and, as usual, his action brought the discussion to an end.  The woman returned to her work; the men put on hats and coats preparatory to going out of doors.  Only the proprietor stood passive a moment absently drawing down his vest over his portly figure.

“Graham,” he said at last, “hitch the mustangs to the light wagon.”

“All right.”

“And, Graham—­”

The man addressed paused.

“Throw in a couple of extra blankets.”

“All right.”

Out of doors the men took up the conversation where they had left off.

“You better begin to hope the old man finds something that’s been afire up there, Grannis,” said the joker of the house.  “If he don’t, you’ve cooked your goose proper.”

Grannis was a new-comer, and looked his surprise.

“Why so?” he asked.

“You’ll find out why,” retorted the other.  “Fire here’s ’most as uncommon as rain, and the boss don’t like them smoky jokes.”

“But I saw smoke, I tell you,” reiterated Grannis, defensively; “smoke, dead sure!”

“All right, if you’re certain sure.”

“Marcom knows what he’s talking about, Grannis,” said Graham.  “He tried to ginger things up a bit when he was new here, like you are; found a litter of coyotes one September—­thought they were timber wolves, I guess, and braced up with his story to the old man.”  The speaker paused with a reflective grin.

“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.