Having been brought up on a ranch, he knew quite well how most work should be done, and he had acquired by absorption rather than by conscious thought a good deal of theory. But Adam Mackay had himself done rather more than half the work. He had had but one steady hired man, Gus Gustafson, a huge Scandinavian who was a splendid worker when told what to do, but who had no head whatever. As Angus could not do the work his father had done he had to obtain additional help, and so he made a proposition to Dave Rennie.
Rennie was not much of a farmer, but he came to the ranch temporarily at first out of his friendship for Angus, and remained.
On a certain Saturday afternoon Angus and Dave Rennie, engaged in hanging a new gate, saw a two-seated rig with three men approaching. Rennie peered at them.
"There's Braden," he said. "I heard he'd got back."
"And that's Nick Garland driving," Angus observed. "Who's the other fellow?"
"Stranger to me. Garland, huh! I never had much use for that sport."
Garland was a young man whose business, so far as he had any, was dealing in cattle. Uncharitable persons said that he dealt more poker. He was a good-looking chap, after a fashion, who affected cowboy garb, rode a good horse, was locally known and considered himself a devil among the girls, and generally tried to live up to the reputation of a dead-game sport.
The third man, whom neither Angus nor Dave recognized, was a nondescript, sandy individual with drooping shoulders, a drooping nose above a drooping moustache which but partially concealed a drooping mouth. On the whole, both Garland and this stranger seemed uncongenial companions for Mr. Braden.
That celebrity grunted as he climbed down. He was a fleshy man of middle age, clean shaven, carefully dressed, with small, somewhat fishy eyes. He took Angus' brown, hardened paw in a soft, moist palm, putting his left hand on his shoulder in a manner which he intended to be sympathetic and protecting; but at which Angus squirmed inwardly and grew rigid outwardly, for in common with normal boys he hated the touch of a stranger.
"And so," said Mr. Braden in a short-winded, throaty voice which held an occasional curious pant like an old-time camp meeting exhorter, "and so this is Angus! It is a matter of great regret to me, my boy, that I was absent at the time of your bereavement. You and your young sister and your young brother have my heartfelt sympathy in this your time of tribulation—huh. Your father was a very dear friend of mine, a man in a thousand, one of nature's noblemen. 'We ne'er shall look upon his like again,' as the poet truly remarks. However, there is no use crying over—that is, the Lord giveth and taketh away—huh, as you have been taught, no doubt. As executor of your father's will my dear boy, I regard myself as in loco parentis, and I hope you will regard me in that way, too."