Dakota stood flipping his quirt against his chaps, a slight frown on his forehead but a forced smirk on his lips.
"It is early," he explained to Stamford, "but the prices is good now—good enough to pay to ship. They'll come down, shore thing—and it saves in outfit, thinning out the herds."
"If that gang of toughs we keep about the H-Lazy Z aren't enough to handle twice our herds," observed Cockney, "then I know nothing about ranching."
"You've shore said it right that time, boss," jeered Dakota. "You don't."
"We've the biggest outfit on the Red Deer."
Dakota faced him squarely with angry eyes.
"Say, who's running that end of the H-Lazy Z?"
Cockney's head turned slowly, and Dakota decided to modify tone and language.
"Ain't I getting result? That's all that counts, ain't it?"
All Stamford's experience warned him that they would be at each other's throats in a moment, but his Western life had been too limited to allow for the greater licence where emotions crowd so close to the surface.