Park slid sidewise in the saddle and proceeded to roll another cigarette. “I'd be willing to bet that by fall you'll have a good-sized string rode down to a whisper. You wait; wait till it gets in your blood. Why, I'd die if you took me off the range. Wait till yuh set out in the dark, on your horse, and count the stars and watch the big dipper swing around towards morning, and listen to the cattle breathing close by—sleeping while you ride around 'em playing guardian angel over their dreams. Wait till yuh get up at daybreak and are in the saddle with the pink uh sunrise, and know you'll sleep fifteen or twenty miles from there that night; and yuh lay down at night with the smell of new grass in your nostrils where your bed had bruised it.
“Why, Bud, if you're a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little old East.” Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept the pace doggedly.
“I've got to go down to the Stevens place,” Park informed him. “You met Mona yesterday—it was her come down on the train with me, yuh remember.” Thurston did remember very distinctly. “Hank says yuh compose stories. Is that right?”
Thurston's mind came back from wondering how Mona Stevens' mouth looked when she was pleased with one, and he nodded.
“Well, there's a lot in this country that ain't ever been wrote about, I guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But the trouble is, them that know ain't in the writing business, and them that write don't know. The way I've figured it, they set back East somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it's a hell of a job they make of it.”
Thurston, remembering the time when he, too, “set back East” and wrote it like he thought maybe it was, blushed guiltily. He was thankful that his stories of the West had, without exception, been rejected as of little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the hands of Park Holloway.
“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you'd tell me just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing a herd.”
“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered, surprised. “What we're going to do when we get there is to receive a shipment of cattle young steer that's coming up from the Panhandle which is a part uh Texas. And we trail 'em up here and turn 'em loose this side the river. After that we'll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other; we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew, twenty-five or thirty men.”
“I didn't know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying some?”
“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds, this spring; some seasons it's more. We get in young stock every year and turn 'em loose on the range till they're ready to ship. It's cheaper than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you'll see some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain't a commencement. Cattle's cheap down South, this year, and seems like everybody's buying. Hank didn't buy as much as some, because he runs quite a bunch uh cows; we'll brand six or seven thousand calves this spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.”