"Jim isn't a rancher; he wasn't born with the first qualification.... I don't believe that's to his discredit, do you?"
She was challenging him with her eyes, facing him squarely.
"Cockney Aikens possesses the greatest qualification of all," he replied, "—the capacity for picking the right man to boss the job—and the right woman to make such a job on the Red Deer endurable."
"That is very eastern of you, Mr. Stamford," she smiled. "I have known the social life that sort of thing springs from." Her face went dreamy. "The right man, you say—yes—perhaps he has picked—the right man. I suppose—that is a qualification."
Stamford felt constrained once more to change the subject.
From the corner of his eye he saw Cockney suddenly raise himself and look away to the hills. Stamford turned in the same direction.
A Mounted Policeman was seated motionless on his horse on the crest of a rise, looking down on the station yard. For only a moment Cockney looked, then slid from the roof to the gangway railing, a frown on his handsome face. At the same instant Dakota dropped from the fence surrounding the stockade and whispered to a companion, and the two sauntered away round the corner of the cattle pens.
A moment later Cockney sauntered carelessly after them and peered away into the Saskatoonberry and bulberry bushes that filled a coulee extending from close to the tracks. In long strides he retraced his steps, crossed the tracks to his horse behind the station, and loped off over the prairie toward the herd-filled coulees.