“Dog nothin’! Do I look like a man that’d lose a dog?”
“Well, Dad,” Mackenzie said, in his slow, thoughtful way, “I don’t exactly know how a man that would lose a dog looks, but I don’t believe you do.”
“Swan Carlson’s back on the range!” said Dad, delivering it before he was ready, perhaps, and before he had fully prepared the way, but unable to hold it a second longer.
“Swan Carlson?”
“Back on the range.”
“So they fixed him up in the hospital at Cheyenne?”
“I reckon they must ’a’. He’s back runnin’ his sheep, and that woman of his’n she’s with him. Swan run one of his herders off the first rattle out of the box, said he’d been stealin’ sheep while he was gone. That’s one of his old tricks to keep from payin’ a man.”
“It sounds like him, all right. Have you seen him?”
“No. Matt Hall come by this evenin’, and told me.”
“I’m glad Swan got all right again, anyhow, even if he’s no better to his wife than he was before. I was kind of worried about him.”