Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/27

Rh with the floury soil that only needed water to produce five crops of alfalfa a year, the fattening for beeves, heavy and firm of flesh.

He saw a puff of white smoke off to the east. He fancied he heard the toot of a whistle from the railroad spur that ran from the main line, on the other side of the range that mounted behind him, to Metzal, the County Seat and shipping point for the community. It was sparsely settled as yet, but the stage was set for Capital to come in, to cut the mesa up into flourishing little farms, divided off by ditches, blossoming like the rose.

Jackson came up behind him, fanning himself with his recovered Stetson. In his other hand he carried two running-irons, not yet cool.

"Hollister left his iron behind in his hurry," he said. "The Lazy H. A damn good brand for him." He hurled the offending tool down the slope. "You 'd have had a hard time to prove title to that ca'f on 'count of its markings, Sheridan, even with me for witness. It was sure a maverick. It had lost its ma. D' you know why?"

Sheridan turned, surprised at the tense quality of Jackson's utterance.

"That skunk had slit the tongue of that ca'f, " said the cowboy, "so it c'udn't suck. It was nigh to weanin' an' it got to eatin' grass after it starved a while an' forgot it's ma. But that's a dawg's trick. If I had my way, a man who 'd do a thing like that sh'ud have his own tongue slit an' be turned loose where he'd know what it was to go thirsty an' hungry, with his mouth all filled up. Damn him,