The old driller spoke rapidly, as though half ashamed of his treason, and when he had finished turned and began climbing the high fence.
“Morg,” called the giant. “Morg.”
“That's all right,” answered the driller, as he vanished up the dark hill side, “just keep your mouth plugged; that's all right.”
The giant touched his horse in the flank with his heel and rode on.
Rufus Alshire was a grazier, a business almost exclusively followed in this magnificent grass country. Many years before, his greatgrandfather, an English Tory, had fled into this inland country in order to escape certain unpleasant relations with the colonial government. Here he had builded an enormous log manor-house, and surrounding himself with rather worthless retainers, maintained a sort of baronial existence. Others followed, and after a time the country was cleared and came to be divided into great tracts of pasture land, owned by these powerful families. But the elements of the feudal system, although suffering some modifications, remained. The tenants were, for the most part, born and reared on the stock land, and were almost fixtures.
The descendants of this independent ancestry continued to reside as near to the central part of their estate as possible, and maintained huge residences, rough at times and not quite comfortable perhaps, but always enormous. The nature of the country being especially adapted to the fattening of beef cattle, this industry soon came to be the exclusive business of this powerful people. It was a profitable and supremely independent industry, and gave wide play to the baronial instincts of the Anglo-Saxon; who, even after the golden time of his race had gone out so many hundred years, still loved the open sky, and the blue hills, and the monster oak trees, and hated in his heart with a stubborn bitter spirit of rebellion the least shadow of restraint. He was willing to serve God if need be, but while he lived he would not serve men. In stature the descendants of the long dead Saxon were huge specimens of the race, almost as big of limb as the fabled barbarians of Lygia; powerful men, whom close and intimate relations with the mother nature kept strong and immensely vital to the very evening of life. But withal the hospitality of the Saxon was profligate, his impulses were kindly, and he was quite content to leave the affairs of government and the problems of civilization to other hands, provided the minions of these powers held their feet back from his soil.
The twilight had deepened into night; on the crest of the far-off hills the great oak trees stood outlined against the sky like mighty silent figures waiting for some mystic word that should call them into life.
The rim of the moon was rising slowly from behind the oil field, red like battered brass; the road, covered with shifting light and shadow, stretched across the rolling country like a silver ribbon. The grazier rode slowly, his hands hanging idly at his sides, and his face set with deep thought; from time to time he raised his ponderous right hand and struck it heavily against the tree of his saddle as though to indicate thereby some important decision finally reached, but as often he dropped the hand back to its place.
The important information of the oil driller had added a mighty element to the matters with which he was evidently concerned. The horse, left to his own inclinations, quickened his pace and presently the shadow of a huge house loomed upon the crest of the hill at the roadside. The horse stopped at the gate, and the man. aroused from his reverie, dismounted slowly, and opening the gate led the horse through; as he closed the gate he stopped for a moment and rested his enormous elbow on the latch. “Well,” he said, as though announcing his temporary conclusion to himself, “I'll ship the cattle to-morrow, and I'll see Jerry.”