“Humph! Charge it up to ’em?”
“I should say not!”
“Jest put ’er down on the wrong side o’ the profit-an’-loss account, eh?”
“No—on the other side. You’ve got to be a good fellow in the railroad-construction game, Mr. Canby. It pays in the end.”
“I’ll punch cows,” observed Canby dryly.
The cattleman took his leave of the senior partner of the Mangan-Hatton Construction Company within the hour. He was to spend the night at a small ranch eight miles from Opaco, and ride to Squawtooth next day. He mounted the black, swung him around with a slight cant in the saddle, and galloped out of town, seeing little, thinking deeply.
The brooding mood held him until he had crossed the river and passed through a rocky defile in a chain of buttes. Then the yellow desert opened its arms to him, and he and the black horse became a moving atom in the vast waste.
He had ridden the fifteen miles of which he had told Mangan for the sole purpose of seeing that gentleman for a few minutes once more. He had met Mangan during the earlier part of the preliminary survey of the proposed railroad. A month previous to that meeting two of the main contractors had called at Squawtooth—Messrs. Demarest and Tillou, of the big firm of Demarest, Spruce & Tillou, of Minneapolis. It was Mr. Demarest who had told Squawtooth that Mangan very likely would decide to subcontract the piece of work nearest to Squawtooth, and that they would be neighbors. Demarest had spoken of the subcontractors as young, energetic men of means, and Squawtooth had become doubly interested.
Then Hunter Mangan himself had come, and at once old Squawtooth took a liking to him—not forgetting that descriptive phrase of Demarest, “young, energetic men of means.”
For be it known that Webster Canby, more commonly known as Squawtooth, the cattle king of the desert country, was an incorrigible snob. Aside from this he was pretty decent.