Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/263

Rh failed utterly to remove any portion of the anxiety from the face of the grazier.

He sat listlessly in his saddle, with his gray eyes half-closed and the muscles of his face drawn down in furrows; the red roan, trained from his colt days, assumed the duties of his master, and moved carefully among the cattle; his equine intelligence appreciating that it was a part of his duty to the indolent master, to see that the drove kept moving slowly, and that no bullock stopped to crop the wet grass by the roadside, or fight with his fellow.

The watches of the night had brought to Rufus Alshire no solution of the matter with which he had struggled so persistently during the evening before. He was acting, it was true, upon his temporary plan, but that seemed but an incident in the main vexatious problem.

The giant was now entirely oblivious of his environment, and deep in his troublous matter he spoke aloud. “If I could only hold the title,” he muttered, and then, as if realizing the folly of his hope, he gripped the tree of his saddle with his hand and straightened his mighty foot suddenly in the stirrup. The