With this love of every form of life there grew a manly gentleness, broken strangely at times by outbursts of temper, so that often it seemed whimsical.
Riding forth one day, in cowboy attire, along the line fence that held in the cattle from the cultivated valley lands, he came upon Philip Davison engaged in angry controversy with a young man of somewhat shabby appearance. The shrewd little eyes of this man observed Justin closely. Beside the fence was a dirty prairie schooner, from which the man had descended, and to it two big raw-boned farm horses were hitched. Eyeing Justin the man pushed back his hat, then awkwardly extended his hand.
“So you’re Justin, air ye—the little boy I met one’t? I reckon you don’t know me? I wouldn’t knowed you, but fer hearin’ the name.”
Justin acknowledged that the man’s face was unfamiliar.
“Well, I’m William Sanders!” He plucked a spear of grass and began to splinter it with his teeth. “I landed hyer some seasons ago with Mr. Fogg, and stayed all night with the doctor over there. Mebbe you’ll remember me now. I’ve thought of you a good many times sense then. You’ve growed a lot. I was thinkin’ about you t’other day while on my way hyer; and a fortune teller I went to in Pueblo picked you out straight off, from the cards she told with. She showed me the jack of hearts, and said that was the young feller I had in mind. Sing’lar, wasn’t it?”
Justin recalled this young man now, and shook his hand heartily.
“It was singular,” he admitted.
“We’ll have to talk over old times by and by,” said Sanders, amiably.
But Davison was not pleased to see Sanders, whom he had never met before. Sanders, it appeared, had bought a quarter-section of land not far from the stream, and had now come to occupy it. Trouble had arisen over the fact that it was included in a large area of mortgaged and government land which Davison had fenced for his cattle. Sanders was demanding that he should cut the fence.
“Cut it and let me git my land,” he insisted, “er I’ll cut it fer ye. I know my rights under the law.”