Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/173

 did not refer to the preceding night's scene between him and Barrett as he drew the young man aside while Dan was hitching the team.

"To all appearances you men will be working for me," Nearing said. "Nobody's likely to bother you this fall under that arrangement, but I can't answer for what may happen to you next spring when you begin to plow, if you stick to it that long. You're pretty close to the edge of our range up there, somebody from the outside may come along and take a shot at you, even the Diamond Tail boys may cut loose when they find you're not hired by me. They resent the coming of the grangers more than the cattlemen themselves. It means cutting them loose from the only trade they know."

Barrett said that, for himself, he did not know that the experiment would extend beyond the hay-making. From what he had heard of the winters in that country, the prospect was not alluring.

So they parted, Barrett taking along his saddlehorse at Nearing's generous urging. Not a word was said between them of the past; not a hint of the future which that gray, half-defeated, baffled man must face and fight in his own way alone.

Dan found himself out of tobacco that evening, and Barrett was little better stocked. On Dan's suggestion that they ride to Bonita and replenish supplies for the busy days ahead of them, they saddled and set out.

Not much had been accomplished that day, for neither of them ever had been introduced to a mowing machine before. Barrett was the one who finally solved