Though Stamford knew as much—or as little—of Cockney Aikens' past as the rest of Medicine Hat, and the big rancher's merry and spendthrift ways belied suspicion of irritation at the loss of "two shillings," the blatant exaggeration of the editor failed somehow to carry off the banter lightly. Cockney's face went grim, and a strange silence fell along the platform.
Then Cockney himself smothered it by a physical retort. Reaching over, he seized Stamford's shoulders and lifted him by the coat at arm's length until their faces were on a level.
"If I had this much added to my stature," blustered the editor, in affected fury, vainly striking out his short arms at the face opposite, "I'd punch you on the nose."
"If you were this size," grinned Aikens, "I mightn't take liberties. Just the same," he added, with a ring of boyish disappointment in his voice, "it would be one h—l of a fight. You've got the white matter, I guess, but I'm just spoiling for a rough-and-tumble. I haven't had what you might call exercise since—" he flushed through his tan, "—oh, for a long time."
It so happened that everyone, including Cockney, was thinking of the "exercise" he had once, largely at the expense of the police, town and Mounted; and the memory of it to the one most concerned was not sweet.
A long line of cattle cars rolled quietly down the track before the corrals, a brakesman on the top keeping up a steady signalling to the engine. When the first two cars were opposite the gangways from the two loading stockades, his hand shot out and the train came to a violent halt. Almost instantly the gates at the bottom of the gangways opened and two lines of steers from the crowded, white-fenced pens rushed up the slope to the open doors of the cars.
The lounging cowboys sprang to life. Throwing themselves in excited abandon on their bronchos behind the station, they tore across the tracks and disappeared in the folds of the prairie, shouting, cracking their quirts, laughing taunts at each other, to reappear a few minutes later, little less noisy, behind a small herd of galloping cattle headed for the emptying outer stockades.
It was a scene of blazing life and colour, clamorous, swift, kaleidoscopic. Stamford's eyes blazed. The East seemed such a dull spot in his past. He thought with a cynical smile of how unfitted he was, by nature and acquirement, for a life so deliciously thrilling.
Cockney struck his hands together explosively.
"There's good old beef for good old England, my boy!"