Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/44

 "In harness already!" Nearing laughed, when the first greetings were over, still holding his young guest warmly by the hand, clasped over in both of his in his fatherly way.

"I'm afraid I'll scare the cows all off the ranch if I look anything like I feel," Barrett said, quite serious in his self-criticism.

"I'll bet the old rig sits easier, but you'll fall into this—why," looking him over approvingly, admiration and approval in tone and expression, "you begin to look like a bronco-buster already."

"I'll be bronco-busted about the first shot out of the box. Ask Dan."

Dan grinned from his perch on the wagon, from which he had not moved to lay a hand to any of the supplies which he had freighted out along with Barrett's trunk. That labor was for wranglers and Mexicans, not a full-blooded cowboy of the aristocracy of his kind, like Dan.

"He'll take to it like a pig to swill, or I miss my guess," said Dan.

"And that's a compliment you may well cross the continent to win!" Nearing declared. "Why," still holding Barrett off at arm's length, shaking hands in his warmest political style, "it's been—how long has it been since I saw you, Ed?"

"I don't just recall the last time, sir, but it must have been shortly before I went to sea."

"No it wasn't—it was on the President's yacht, you were on some kind of special detail—don't you remember?"