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 hoping for the rain that had been nearly three years in coming, except an aggravating shower now and then.

The bones of many a herd whitened that sandy country, set with its tenacious, never-dying postoak trees; hundreds of his father's cattle had gone in that miserable way while the old man had hung on in the belief that his losses would not equal the expense of running away from the drouth, hoping for the rain that never before had played him quite such a disastrous trick.

It had broken the old cowman at last, and put him in his grave. Young Tom had picked up what was left and set out for Kansas, in the hope that he might save enough to return to Texas after the drouth was broken, and start another herd. Kansas was a good place to retreat upon in the day of necessity, but Texas was the only place to live. The only place, because it was the only place he knew.

Calhoun Withers, the biggest cattle speculator in the southwest, had come into that famine-stricken neighborhood and pretty well cleaned it up at his own price. It was a bone and hide price, Withers had said. That was all the cattle of that country were worth. His purchases were coming along behind Tom Laylander, twenty-five hundred head or more.

Withers, as an old friend of Tom Laylander's father, had advised the young man not to sell at these famine prices. There was going to be a shortage in cattle, with good prices as a consequence, that fall, owing to the unfitness of the Texas supply for the butcher's block.