Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/184

172 "It kills 'em," he said, "and it kills 'em just as far as that old cannon of yours, Bill. I wouldn't have believed it! And it kills them clean. It's either a clean kill or a clean miss; and you've got to hold close. I missed several birds just because I didn't get square on and centre them. And, Lord! she does handle prettily!"

"How many did you scratch down with the thing?" inquired Hunter.

"An even dozen, with twenty shots."

"Beginner's luck," asserted Bill. "Can't repeat in a thousand years. Me, I like a gun you can depend on; not one you got to carry a rabbit's foot with."

Corbell's eyes were snapping.

"Ill tell you what I'll do," he suggested, suavely. "I'll take twenty shells to-morrow morning, after the birds are scattered, and I'll get more birds with this little popgun than you can with that old blunderbuss of yours. Only it will cost you fifty dollars to see me do it. Are you on?"

"I promised my mother I wouldn't gamble," said Bill. "But this isn't gambling: it's a sure thing. Yes, I'll take your money."

They returned to the ranch house for lunch at noon, after which saddle horses were brought and they spent the rest of the day jogging in a leisurely fashion over the ranges. Kenneth trailed along. The more he saw and the longer he listened the more impressed was he by the great complication and uncertainty of the cattle business, and the amount of specialized knowledge necessary to run it on anything but a hit-or-miss basis. As they went along Corbell told him something of what happens when two dry years come in succession; the failure, first of the feed, and then of the streams and springs; the weakening and the starvation of cattle and other stock.

"I drove a bunch of horses across country 'way over into Inyo County just to save them," he said. "You could have your pick of riding animals, if you'd promise to feed them. We shot all but the very finest stock. Some of the Spanish people drove big herds of cattle off the sea cliffs so they would not die inland and contaminate the air. They estimate that a million cattle died that time. A million's a good many!"