“Stella’s been devilin’ me to get a machine ever since Jim Reid got his,” he continued, while the horses were repeating their preliminary contortions, and Patches was regaining his seat.  “But I told her I’d be scared to death to ride in the fool contraption.”

At this Buck and Prince, in a wild riot of animal strength and spirit, leaped a slight depression in the road with such vigor that the front wheels of the buckboard left the ground.  Patches glanced sidewise at his employer, with a smile of delighted appreciation, but said nothing.

The Dean liked him for that.  The Dean always insists that the hardest man in the world to talk to is the one who always has something to say for himself.

“Why,” he continued, with a burst of honest feeling, “if I was ever to bring one of them things home to the Cross-Triangle, I’d be ashamed to look a horse or steer in the face.”

They dashed through a patch of wild sunflowers that in the bottom lands grow thick and rank; whirled past the tumble-down corner of an old fence that enclosed a long neglected garden; and dashed recklessly through a deserted and weed-grown yard.  On one side of the road was the ancient barn and stable, with sagging, weather-beaten roof, leaning walls and battered doors that hung dejectedly on their rusty and broken hinges.  The corral stockade was breached in many places by the years that had rotted the posts.  The old-time windlass pump that, operated by a blind burro, once lifted water for the long vanished herds, was a pathetic old wreck, incapable now of offering drink to a thirsty sparrow.  On their other hand, beneath the wide branches of giant sycamores and walnuts, and backed by a tangled orchard wilderness, stood an old house, empty and neglected, as if in the shadowy gloom of the untrimmed trees it awaited, lonely and forlorn, the kindly hand of oblivion.

“This is the old Acton homestead,” said the Dean quietly, as one might speak beside an ancient grave.

Then as they were driving through the narrow lane that crosses the great meadow, he indicated with a nod of his head group of buildings on the other side of the green fields, and something less than a mile to the south.

“That’s Jim Reid’s place.  His iron is the Pot-Hook-S.  Jim’s stock runs on the old Acton range, but the homestead belongs to Phil yet.  Jim Reid’s a fine man.”  The Dean spoke stoutly, almost as though he were making the assertion to convince himself.  “Yes, sir, Jim’s all right.  Good neighbor; good cowman; square as they make ’em.  Some folks seem to think he’s a mite over-bearin’ an’ rough-spoken sometimes, and he’s kind of quick at suspicionin’ everybody; but Jim and me have always got along the best kind.”

Again the Dean was silent, as though he had forgotten the man beside him in his occupation with thoughts that he could not share.

When they had crossed the valley meadows and, climbing the hill on the other side, could see the road for several miles ahead, the Dean pointed to a black object on the next ridge.