She had a picture of the place on the stationery which
Lorraine used when she wrote him. There were two palm trees in front,
with bay windows behind them, and pillars. Brit used to study these
magnificences and thank God that Minnie was doing so well. He never
could have given her a home like that. Brit sometimes added that he had
never been cut out for a married man, anyway.
Old-timers forgot that Brit had ever been married, and late comers never
heard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit were old
bachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town only when
they needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinned
scornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all the
range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talked
politics nor told which candidates received their two votes. They kept
the same two men season after season,--leathery old range hands with
eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision, and with the
gift of silence, which is rare.
If you know anything at all about cattlemen, you will know that the
Quirt was a poor man's ranch, when I tell you that Hunter and Johnson
milked three cows and made butter, fed a few pigs on the skim milk and
the alfalfa stalks which the saddle horses and the cows disdained to
eat, kept a flock of chickens, and sold what butter, eggs and pork they
did not need for themselves.
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