selves, but the women
remained standing.

"Perhaps you will excuse us now," said the rancher's wife. "You will
wish to talk over business. Y.D. will show you upstairs, and we will
expect you to be with us for breakfast."

With a bow she left the room, followed by her daughter. Linder had a
sense of being unsatisfied; it was as though a ravishing meal has been
placed before a hungry man, and only its aroma had reached his senses
when it had been taken away. Well, it provoked the appetite--

The rancher re-filled the glasses, but Transley left his untouched, and
Linder did the same. There were business matters to discuss, and it was
no fair contest to discuss business in the course of a drinking bout
with an old stager like Y.D.

"I got to have another thousand tons," the rancher was saying. "Can't
take chances on any less, and I want you boys to put it up for me."

"Suits me," said Transley, "if you'll show me where to get the hay."

"You know the South Y.D?"

"Never been on it."

"Well, it's a branch of the Y.D. which runs south-east from The Forks.
Guess it got its name from me, because I built my first cabin at The
Forks. That was about the time you was on a milk diet, Transley, and
us old-timers had all outdoors to play with. You see, the Y.D. is a
cantank'rous stream, like its godfather. At The Forks you'd nat'rally
suppose is where two branches joined, an' jogged on henceforth in double
harness. Well, that ain't it at all. This crick has modern ideas, an'
at The Forks it divides itself into two, an' she hikes for the Gulf o'
Mexico an' him for Hudson's Bay. As I was sayin', I built my first cabin
at The Forks--a sort o' peek-a-boo cabin it was, where the wolves usta
come an' look in at nights. Well, I usta look out through the same
holes. I had the advantage o' usin' language, an' I reckon we was about
equal scared. There was no wife or kid in those days."

The rancher paused, took a long draw on his pipe, and his eyes glowed
with the light of old recollections.

"Well, as I was sayin'," he continued presently, "folks got to callin'
the stream the Y.D., after me. That's what you get for bein' first on
the ground--a monument for ever an ever. This bein' the main stream got
the name proper, an' the other branch bein' smallest an' running kind
o' south nat'rally got called the South Y.D. I run stock in both valleys
when I was at The Forks, but not much since I came down here. Well,
there's maybe a thousand