l,
Lorraine--Minnie had wanted fancy names for the kids, and Brit
apologised whenever he spoke of them, which was seldom--Lorraine had
written that "Mamma has an apartment house." That had sounded
prosperous, even at the beginning. And as the years passed and their
address remained the same, Brit became fixed in the belief that Casa
Grande was all that its name implied, and perhaps more. Minnie must be
getting rich. She had a picture of the place on the stationery which
Lorraine used when she wrote him. There were two palm trees in front,
with bay windows behind them, and pillars. Brit used to study these
magnificences and thank God that Minnie was doing so well. He never
could have given her a home like that. Brit sometimes added that he
had never been cut out for a married man, anyway.

Old-timers forgot that Brit had ever been married, and late comers
never heard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit were
old bachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town only
when they needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinned
scornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all
the range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never
talked politics nor told which candidates received their two votes.
They kept the same two men season after season,--leathery old range
hands with eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision,
and with the gift of silence, which is rare.

If you know anything at all about cattlemen, you will know that the
Quirt was a poor man's ranch, when I tell you that Hunter and Johnson
milked three cows and made butter, fed a few pigs on the skim milk and
the alfalfa stalks which the saddle horses and the cows disdained to
eat, kept a flock of chickens, and sold what butter, eggs and pork they
did not need for themselves. Cattlemen seldom do that. More often
they buy milk in small tin cans, butter in "squares," and do without
eggs.

Four of a kind were the men of the TJ up-and-down, and even Bill
Warfield--president and general manager of the Sawtooth Cattle Company,
and of the Federal Reclamation Company and several other companies,
State senator and general benefactor of the Sawtooth country--even the
great Bill Warfield lifted his hat to the owners of the Quirt when he
met them, and spoke of them as "the finest specimens of our old,
fast-vanishing type of range men." Senator Warfield himself
represented the modern