s found themselves seated on the
veranda talking together, as only devoted relationship will permit
after years of separation.

They had just returned from a brief inspection of the little ranch for
Bill's edification. The big man's enthusiasm had demanded immediate
satisfaction. His headlong nature impelled him to the earliest
possible digestion of the life he was about to enter. So he had
insisted on a tour of inspection.

The inspection was of necessity brief. There was so little to be seen
in the way of an outward display of the prosperity his elder brother
claimed. In consequence, as it proceeded, the newcomer's spirits fell.
His radiant dreams of a rancher's life tumbled about his big
unfortunate head, and, for the moment, left him staggered.

His first visit was to the barn, where Kid Blaney, his brother's
ranchman, was rubbing down two well saddle-marked cow-ponies, after
his morning out on the fences. It was a crazy sort of a shanty, built
of sod walls with a still more crazy door frame, and a thatched roof
more than a foot thick. It was half a dug-out on the hillside, and
suggested as much care as a hog pen. The floor was a mire of
accumulations of manure and rotted bedding, and the low roof gave the
place a hovelish suggestion such as Bill could never have imagined in
the breezy life of a rancher, as he understood it.

There were one or two other buildings of a similar nature. One was
used for a few unhealthy looking fowls; another, by the smell and
noise that emanated therefrom, housed a number of pigs. Then there was
a small grain storehouse. These were the buildings which comprised the
ranch. They were just dotted about in the neighborhood of the house,
at points most convenient for their primitive construction.

The corrals, further down the slope, offered more hope. There were
three of them, all well enough built and roomy. There was one with a
branding "pinch," outside which stood a small hand forge and a number
of branding irons. At the sight of these things Bill's spirit
improved.

When questioned as to pastures and grazing, Charlie led him along a
cattle track, through the bush up the slope, to the prairie level
above. Here there were three big pastures running into a hundred acres
or more, all well fenced, and the wire in perfect order. Bill's
improving spirits received a further fillip. The grazing, Charlie told
him, lay behind these limits upon the open plains, over which the
newcomer had