Charlie Bryant understood. The man was talking to his horse. Had he needed evidence it came forthwith, for, with a rush, at a headlong gallop, a horseman dashed from amid the bushes and drew up with a jolt almost on top of him.

"Charlie!"

"Bill! Good old--Bill!"

The greetings came simultaneously. The next instant Big Brother Bill flung out of the saddle, and stood wringing his brother's hand with great force.

"Gee! It's good to see you, Charlie," he cried joyously.

"Good? Why, it's great, and--and I took you for one of the d.a.m.ned p'lice."

Charlie's face was wreathed in such a smile of welcome and relief, that all Big Brother Bill's doubts in that direction were flung pell-mell to the winds.

Charlie caught something of the other's beaming enthusiasm.

"Why, I've been expecting you for days, old boy. Thought maybe you'd changed your mind. Say, where's your baggage? Coming on behind? You haven't lost it?" he added anxiously, as Bill's face suddenly fell.

"I forgot. Say, was there ever such a tom-fool trick?" Bill cried, with a great laugh at his own folly. "Why, I left it checked at Moosemin--without instructions."

Charlie's smiling eyes suddenly widened.

"Moosemin? What in the name of all that's----?"

"I'll have to tell you about it later," Bill broke in hastily. "I've had one awful journey. If it hadn't been for a feller I met on the road I don't know when I'd have landed here."

Charlie nodded, and the smile died out of his eyes.

"I saw him. You certainly were traveling in good company."

Bill nodded, towering like some good-natured St. Bernard over a mild-eyed water spaniel.

"Good company's a specialty with me. But I didn't come alongside any of it, since I set out to make here 'cross country from Moosemin on the advice of the only bigger fool than myself I've ever met, until I ran into him. Say, Charlie, I s'pose its necessary to have a deal of gra.s.s around to run a ranch on?"

Charlie's eyes lit with the warmest amus.e.m.e.nt. This great brother of his was the brightest landmark in his memory of the world he had said good-bye to years ago.

"You can't graze cattle on bare ground," he replied watchfully. "Why?"

Bill's shoulders went up to the accompaniment of a chuckle.

"Nothing--only I hate gra.s.s. I seem to have gone over as much gra.s.s in the last week as a boarding-house spring lamb. But for that feller, I surely guess I'd still be chasing over it, like those 'strays' he spends his life rounding-up."

A quick look of inquiry flashed in the rancher's eyes.

"Strays?" he inquired.

Bill nodded gravely. "Yes, he's something in the ranching line. Rounds up 'strays,' and herds 'em to their right homes. His name's Fyles--Stanley Fyles."

Just for an instant Charlie's face struggled with the more bitter feelings Fyles's name inspired. Then he gave way to the appeal of a sort of desperate humor, and broke into an uncontrolled fit of laughter.

Bill looked on wondering, his great blue eyes widely open. Then he caught the infection, and began to laugh, too, but without knowing why.

After some moments, however, Charlie sobered and choked back a final gurgle.

"Oh, dear!" he exclaimed. "You've done me a heap of good, Bill. That's the best laugh I've had in weeks. That fellow a rancher?

Fyles--Stanley Fyles a--rancher? Well, p'raps you're right. That's his job all right--rounding up 'strays,' and herding 'em to their right homes. But the 'strays' are 'crooks,' and their homes the penitentiary. That's Inspector Stanley Fyles, of the Mounted Police, and just about the smartest man in the force. He's come out here to start his ranching operations on Rocky Springs, which has the reputation of being the busiest hive of crooks in Western Canada.

You're going to see things hum, Bill--you've just got around in time."

CHAPTER XI

THE UNREGENERATE

Later in the afternoon the two brothers 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 acc.u.mulations 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 spent so much time riding.

"You see, Bill," he said, half apologetically, "I'm only a very small rancher. The land I own is this on which the house stands, and these pastures, and another pasture or two further up the valley. For grazing, I simply rent rights from the Government. It answers well enough, and I only have to keep one regular boy in consequence. Spring and fall I hire extra hands for round-up. It pays me better that way."

Bill nodded with increasing understanding. His original dreams had received a bad jolt, but he was beginning a readjustment of focus.

Besides, his simple mind was already formulating fresh plans, and he began to talk of them with that whole-hearted enthusiasm which seemed to be the foundation of his nature.

"Sure," he said cordially. "And--and you've done a big heap, Charlie.

Say, how much did dad start you out with? Five thousand dollars? Yes, I remember, five thousand, and our mother gave you another two thousand five hundred. It was all she had. She'd saved it up in years.

It wasn't much to turn bare land into a money-making proposition, specially when you'd had no experience. But we're going to alter all that. We're going to own our grazing, if it can be bought. Yes, sir, we're going to own a lot more, and I've got nearly one hundred thousand dollars to do it with. We're going to turn these barns into barns, and we're going to run horses as well as cattle. We're going to grow wheat, too. That's the coming game. All the boys say so down East--that is, the real bright boys. We're just going to get busy, you and me, Charlie. We're going to have a deed of partnership drawn up all square and legal, and I'm going to blow my stuff in it against what you've got already, and what you know. That's what I'm here for."

By the aid of his big voice and aggressive bulk Bill strove to conceal his obvious desire to benefit his brother under an exterior of strong business methods. And he felt the result to be all he could desire. He told himself that a man of Charlie's unbusiness-like nature was quite easy to impress. When it came to a proper understanding of business he was much his brother's superior.

Charlie, however, was in no way deceived, but such was his regard for this simple-minded creature that his protest was of the mildest.

"Of course we could do a great deal with your money, Bill, but--but it's all you've got, and----"

His protest was hastily thrust aside.

"See here, Charlie, boy, that's right up to me," Bill cried, with a buoyant laugh. "I'm out here to ranch. That's what I've come for, that's what I've worn my skin to the bone for on the most outrageously uncomfortable saddle I've ever thrown a leg over. That's why I took the trouble to keep on chasing up this place when my brain got plumb addled at the sight of so much gra.s.s. That's why I didn't go back to find the feller--and shoot him--for advising me to get off at Moosemin instead of hitting back on my tracks for the right place to change trains. You see, maybe I haven't all the horse sense in some things you have, but I've got my back teeth into the idea of this ranching racket, and my dollars are going to talk all they know. I tell you, when my mind's made up, I can't be budged an inch. It's no use your trying. I know you, Charlie. You're scared to death I'll lose my money--well, I'm ready to lose it, if things go that way. Meanwhile, I've a commercial proposition. I'm out to make good, and I'm looking for you to help me."