Big Bill was bigger and a good deal slower than in the old days on the Red Butte Ranch, and his coarse hair was very gray, but it still crowned the same kindly, simple face. Bill was feeling his way to the retired list, though he didn't realize it himself, and he had kept his job because no one cared to explain to him that he was getting old. It was hoped that some day he'd tumble to it himself and resign. No one liked to contemplate what would happen then, so no one did. The agent was not a sentimental man, but he knew the working value of sentiment, and so Bill stayed on.
He and Calthorpe shared their house, a little wooden box pitched in the shelter of a clump of quaking ash ("quaking asp" in the vernacular) some little distance below the Agency and on the bank of an irrigating ditch. As Bill came in sight of it he saw Calthorpe calmly sitting in the door-way. Instead of riding into the Agency the young man had deliberately avoided it.
"Hello, Bill," he shouted cheerily.
"Hello, son. Say, Ladd's terrible anxious to see you."
To this the other replied irrelevantly:
"Seen Wah-na-gi?"
"No."
"Seen Appah?"
"No," and the smile of welcome faded from Bill's face, and he sat down on a convenient soap box, picked up a stick on the point of his pocket-knife, and began to whittle. The young man saw he was displeased and waited.
"Say, son, you're kind of runnin' wild on the range, ain't ye? And ye ain't a-gittin' anywhere, or a-servin' any useful purpose 's far as I kin see. Ain't ye kind o' fergittin' what ye come out here fer? What you lingerin' round here fer any way?"