Dennison Grant | Page 7

granted. Once or twice the women interjected a lead to a different subject of conversation in which their words would have carried greater authority, but Y.D. instantly swung it back to the all-absorbing topic of hay.
The Chinese boy served a pudding of some sort, and presently the meal was ended.
"She's been a dry summer--powerful dry," said the rancher, with a wink at his guests. "Zen, I think there's a bit of gopher poison in there yet, ain't there?"
The girl left the room without remark, returning shortly with a jug and glasses, which she placed before her father.
"I suppose you wear a man's size, Transley," he said, pouring out a big drink of brown liquor, despite Transley's deprecating hand. "Linder, how many fingers? Two? Well, we'll throw in the thumb. Y.D? If you please, just a little snifter. All set?"
The rancher rose to his feet, and the company followed his example.
"Here's ho!--and more hay," he said, genially.
"Ho!" said Linder.
"The daughter of the Y.D!" said Transley, looking across the table at the girl. She met his eyes full; then, with a gleam of white teeth, she raised an empty glass and clinked it against his.
The men drained their glasses and re-seated themselves, 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 tons o' hay over in the South Y.D., an' you boys better trail over there to-morrow an' pitch into it--that is, if you're satisfied with the price I'm payin' you."
"The price is all right," said Transley, "and we'll hit the trail at sun-up. There'll be no trouble--no confliction of interests, I mean?"
"Whose interests?" demanded the rancher, beligerently. "Ain't I the father of the Y.D? Ain't the whole valley named for me? When it comes to interests--"
"Of course," Transley agreed, "but I just wanted to know how things stood in case we ran up against something. It's not like the old days, when a rancher would rather lose twenty-five per cent. of his stock over winter than bother putting up hay. Hay land is getting to be worth money, and I just want to know where we stand."
"Quite proper," said Y.D., "quite proper. An' now the matter's under discussion, I'll jus' show