Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/255

Rh 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 great-grandfather, 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.