n ten minutes' time Rankin's
big shapeless figure, seated in the old buckboard, was moving northwest
at the steady jog-trot typical of prairie travel, and which as the hours
pass by annihilates distance surprisingly. Simply a fat, an abnormally
fat, man, the casual observer would have said. It remained for those who
came in actual contact with him to learn the force beneath the
forbidding exterior,--the relentless bull-dog energy that had made him
dictator of the great ranch, and kept subordinate the restless, roving,
dissolute men-of-fortune he employed,--the deliberate and impartial
judgment which had made his word as near law as it was possible for any
mandate to be among the motley inhabitants within a radius of fifty
miles. Had Rankin chosen he could have attained honor, position, power
in his native Eastern home. No barrier built of convention or of
conservatism could have withstood him. Society reserves her prizes
largely for the man of initiative; and, uncomely block as he was, Rankin
was of the true type. But for some reason, a reason known to none of his
associates, he had chosen to come to the West. Some consideration or
other had caused him to stop at his present abode, and had made him
apparently a fixture in the midst of this unconquered country.

There was no road in the direction Rankin was travelling,--only the
unbroken prairie sod, eaten close by the herds that grazed its every
foot. Even under the direct sunlight the air was sharp. The regular
breath of the mustangs shot out like puffs of steam from the exhaust of
an engine, and the moisture frosted about their flanks and nostrils. But
the big man on the seat did not notice temperature. He had produced a
pipe from the depths beneath the wagon seat, and tobacco from a jar
cunningly fitted into one corner of the box, both without moving from
his place, the seat being hinged and divided in the centre to facilitate
the operation. More a home to him than the ranch-house itself was that
battered buckboard. Here, on an average, he spent eight hours out of the
twenty-four, and that seat-box was a veritable storehouse of articles
used in his daily life. As the jog-trot measured off the miles he
replenished the pipe again and again, leaving behind him the odor of
strong tobacco.

Not until he was within a mile of the "Big B" property, and a rise in
the monotonous roll of the land brought him in range of vision, did
Rankin show that he felt more than ordinary i