"Don't think I've seen you before."
"I'm a line-rider—don't often get to the ranch-house."
"What ground do you cover?"
"From Dry Creek to the rim-rock, and south past Box Cañon."
Three pair of eyes were focused watchfully on Roberts. The sallow man squirted tobacco at a knot in the floor and rubbed his bristly chin with the palm of a hand.
"Kinda lonesome out there, ain't it?" he ventured.
"That's as how you take it. The country is filled with absentees," admitted Roberts.
"Reckoned it was. Never been up that way myself. A sort of a bad-lands proposition, I've heard tell—country creased with arroyos, packed with rocks an' rattlesnakes mostly."
The heavy-set man broke in harshly. "Anybody else run cattle there except old man Wadley?"
"Settlers are comin' in on the other side of the rim-rock. Cattle drift across. I can count half a dozen brands 'most any day."