Spud answered with a joyous oath that it certainly looked like it.

“He’s puttin’ Brayley in on this en’ an’ takin’ ol’ Bat Truxton clean off’n it to throw him onto the Rattlesnake,” Spud went on.  “Bat ’ll have nigh on a hundred men down there workin’ overtime before the week’s up, he says.  I guess he’ll have his paws full without tryin’ to run the cow en’, too.”

“An’ I reckon,” continued Jones, thoughtfully, “as how Brayley won’t sleep all the time up here.  He’s got to swing the whole Half Moon an’ the Lone Dog an’ the Five Hills an’ the Sunk Hole outfit.”  He shook his head and spat before he concluded.  “What with the Ol’ Man buyin’ the Sunk Hole, an’ figgerin’ on marketin’ in Injun Creek, an’ crowdin’ work down in the Rattlesnake, Brayley ’ll be some busy if he don’t take on another big bunch of punchers.  Huh?”

Spud made no answer, for at this juncture the cook put a big platter of steak, piled high, upon the table, and the men, dragging their chairs after them, waited no other invitation “to set in.”  Conniston for a moment held back.  Then, as he saw that there were several vacant places, he took up his own chair and sat down at the end of the table nearest him.  The man at his left helped himself to meat by harpooning the largest piece in sight and dragging it, dripping, over the edge of the platter and to his own plate.  Then he shoved the platter toward Conniston without looking to see whether or not it arrived at its proper destination, and gave his undivided attention to the dish of boiled potatoes which the man upon his left had shoved at him.  Conniston, helping himself slowly, found soon that the potatoes, the rice, and a tray of biscuits were all lodged at his elbow, waiting to be ferried on around the end of the table.

For a few moments all conversation died utterly.  These men had done a day’s work, a day’s work calling upon straining muscles and unslacking energy, and their hunger was an active thing.  They plied their knives and forks, took great draughts of their hot tea and coffee, with little attention to aught else.  But presently, as their hunger began to be appeased, they broke into conversation again, talking of a hundred range matters of which Conniston understood almost nothing.  He drew from the fragments which reached him above the general clatter the same thing that he had got from the few words which had passed between Rawhide Jones and Spud.  Evidently, the cowboys were pressed with work both on the Half Moon and on the other ranges, and the new foreman, Brayley, was putting on more men and sparing no one in carrying out the orders which came from headquarters.  Equally apparently, the man whom they called Bat Truxton was in command of the reclamation work in Rattlesnake Valley, and now with a force of a hundred men was working with an activity even more feverish than Brayley’s.

During the meal five more men came in, and with a word of rough greeting to their fellows dropped into their chairs and helped themselves deftly.  Conniston recognized one of the men as the half-breed, Joe, whom he had seen meet Miss Crawford in Indian Creek.  Another was Lonesome Pete.  Conniston was more gratified than he knew when the red-headed reader of “Macbeth” nodded to him and said a quiet “Howdy.”  The last man to come in was Brayley.