I have
seen and done and been too much. I've come back to the Big
Country, where the pay is poor and the work is hard and the
comfort small, but where a man and his soul meet their Maker face
to face."
The Cattleman had finished his yarn. For a time no one spoke.
Outside, the volume of rain was subsiding. Windy Bill reported
a few stars shining through rifts in the showers. The chill that
precedes the dawn brought us as close to the fire as the
smouldering guano would permit.
"I don't know whether he was right or wrong," mused the
Cattleman, after a while. "A man can do a heap with that much
money. And yet an old 'alkali' is never happy anywhere else.
However," he concluded emphatically, "one thing I do know: rain,
cold, hunger, discomfort, curses, kicks, and violent deaths
included, there isn't one of you grumblers who would hold that
gardening job you spoke of three days!"
CHAPTER FOUR
THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
Dawn broke, so we descended through wet grasses to the canon.
There, after some difficulty, we managed to start a fire, and
so ate breakfast, the rain still pouring down on us. About
nine o'clock, with miraculous suddenness, the torrent stopped.
It began to turn cold.
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