They sat on the porch of the ranch house after dinner, listening to the far-off yipping of coyotes and the nearer croaking of frogs down at the spring.
Simon had stayed, of course. He had always meant to stay, although he had put on a proper show of diffidence. In fact, he had taken quite a little trouble to make sure of becoming a welcome friend at the Circle Y. And with the insidious intimacy of dinner added to his acquaintance with Jean Morland, he was even more sure that it would be no hardship to spend the time that he expected to spend there.
“How much stock do you have here?” Simon asked.
It was one of those desultory conversations full of long pauses and random twists, but rich with warmth and contentment.
Morland said, “About five thousand head. Not very much, but not enough to be too big a headache.”
“Pretty good range?”
“Not so bad as you’d think. Eh, Hank?”
“We go back quite a ways into the hills,” said Hank Reefe. “They do pretty good back there. It’s handy havin’ the stream. They don’t ever need to go short of water.”
Reefe was the foreman. He sat in the fourth chair, on the other side of Jean, rocking himself gently, his long thin legs stretched out. He was probably not much more than thirty, but his weathered face was deeply carved with the lines that a man gets from staring into hot shimmering distances. He had good level eyes and the kind of long sinewy features that are an unmistakable inheritance from the stock that first fought its way through that untamed country.
“There’s no mining in these parts, is there?” Simon asked casually.