A gesture indicated the barren, brown waste of prairie.
"Too much civilization."
"Really?"
"Even the cattle got no fight in 'em." He added, "That sounds like I'm a fighter. I ain't."
"Till you're stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?"
"Heat me up an' I'll burn. Soil wood."
"You're pretty familiar with the Western country?"
"I get around."
"Perhaps you'd recognize this."
He took a scroll from his breast pocket and unrolled the photograph of the forest and the ranchhouse with the two mountains in the distance. Wilkes considered it unperturbed.