I don't know--I don't
feel half as sure of myself as I did before I made that bobble in town.
Before that, I did kinda have an idea that all there was to it was to
quit. I thought, once I made up my mind, that would settle it. But
that's just the commencement; you've got to fight something inside of
you that's as husky a fighter as you are. You've got to--"

"There!" Mason reached out and tapped him impressively on the arm with a
match he was about to light. "Now you've got the bull right by the
horns! You ain't so darned sure of yourself now--and so I'm dead willing
to gamble on you. I ain't a bit afraid to go off and let you have full
swing."

"Well, I hope you won't feel like kicking me all over the ranch when you
get back," Ford said, after a long pause, during which Mason's whole
attention seemed centered upon his cigarette. "It's going to be an
uphill climb, old-timer--and a blamed long hill at that. And it's going
to be pretty darned slippery, in places."

"I sabe that, all right," grinned Mason. "But I sabe you pretty well,
too. You'll dig in your toes and hang on by your eye-winkers if you have
to. But you'll get up, all right; I'll bank on that.

"Speaking of booze-fighters," he went on, without giving Ford a chance
to contradict him, "I wish you'd keep an eye on old Mose. Now, there's a
man that'll drink whisky as long as it's made, if he can get it. I
wouldn't trust that old devil as far as I can throw him, and that's a
fact. I have to watch pretty close, to keep it off the ranch, and him
on. It's the only way to get along with him--he's apt to run amuck, if
he gets full enough; and good cooks are as scarce as good foremen." A
heartening smile went with the last sentence.

"If he does make connections with the booze, don't can him, Ford, if you
can help it. Just shut him up somewhere till he gets over it. There's
nothing holds good men with an outfit like the right kind of grub--and
Mose sure can cook. The rest of the men you can handle to suit yourself.
Slim and Johnnie are all right over at Ten Mile--you made a good stab
when you picked them two out--and you will want a couple of fellows here
besides Walt, to feed them calves. When the cows are throwed back on the
range and the fences gone over careful--I ought to have tended to that
before, but I got to putting it off--you can pay off what men you don't
need or want."

There was no combating the friendship of a man like that. Ford mentally
squared