"Yes, they'd reckon it slow, I guess," Gordon agreed. "But," he went on with enthusiasm, "the life of it. The air." He took a deep breath of the sparkling mountain atmosphere. "It's champagne. The champagne of life. Say, it's good to be alive in such a place. And you," he gazed inquiringly into the man's strong face, "you began it from—the beginning?"
"I built the first ranch house with my own hands. My old wife an' I built up this ranch and ran it. And now it's rich and big—she's gone. She never saw it win out. Hazel's took her place, and it's been for her to see it grow to what it is. She helped me ship my first single year's crop of twenty thousand beeves to the market ten years ago. She was a small kiddie then, and she cried her pretty eyes out when I told her they were going to the slaughter yards of Chicago. You see, she'd known most of 'em as calves."
"The work of it must be enormous," meditated Gordon, after a pause in which he had pictured that small child weeping over her lost calves.
"So," rumbled Mallinsbee. "We're used to it. I run thirty boys all the year round, and more at round-up. Guess if I was missing Hazel wouldn't be at a loss to carry on. She's a great ranchman. She knows it all."
"Wonderful," Gordon cried in admiration. "It's staggering to think of a girl like that handling this great concern."
"There's two foremen, though. They've been with us years," said the other simply.
But Gordon's wonder remained no less, and Mallinsbee went on—
"After breakfast we'll take a gun and get up into those woods yonder. Maybe we'll put up a jack rabbit, or a blacktail deer. Anyway, I guess there's always a bunch of prairie chicken around."
"Fine," cried Gordon, all his sporting instincts banishing every other thought. "Which——"
But Hazel's voice interrupted him, summoning them both to breakfast.