“You ought to get around in a week or two.”
“But that ain’t figgerin’ the time a feller has to 9 lay out in the bresh waitin’ and takin’ rheumatiz in his j’ints. I couldn’t touch the job for the old figger; things is higher.”
“Look here, Mark”—Chadron opened the slip which he had wound round his finger—“this one is worth ten, yes, all, the others. Make your own price on him. But I want it done; no bungled job.”
Mark took the paper and laid his pipe aside while he studied it.
“Macdonald?”
“Alan Macdonald,” nodded Chadron. “That feller’s opened a ditch from the river up there on my land and begun to irrigate!”
“Irrigatin’, huh?” said Mark, abstractedly, moving his finger down the column of names.
“He makes a blind of buyin’ up cattle and fattenin’ ’em on the hay and alfalfer he’s raisin’ up there on my good land, but he’s the king-pin of the rustlers in this corner of the state. He’ll be in here tomorrow with cattle for the Indian agent—it’s beef day—and you can size him up. But you’ve got to keep your belly to the ground like a snake when you start anything on that feller, and you’ve got to make sure you’ve got him dead to rights. He’s quick with a gun, and he’s sure.”
“Five hundred?” suggested Mark, with a crafty sidelong look.
“You’ve named it.”