“How many head do you expect to get?” says Jim.

“A thousand or twelve hundred; half of ‘em fat, and two-thirds of them young cattle.”

“By George! that’s something like a haul; but you can’t muster such a lot as that without a yard.”

“I know that,” says father. “We’re putting up a yard on a little plain about a mile from here. When they find it, it’ll be an old nest, and the birds flown.”

“Well, if that ain’t the cheekiest thing I ever heard tell of,” says I laughingly. “To put up a yard at the back of a man’s run, and muster his cattle for him! I never heard the like before, nor anyone else. But suppose the cove or his men come across it?”

“ ‘Tain’t no ways likely,” says father. “They’re the sleepiest lot of chaps in this frontage I ever saw. It’s hardly worth while ‘touching’ them. There’s no fun in it. It’s like shooting pheasants when they ain’t preserved. There’s no risk, and when there’s no risk there’s no pleasure. Anyway that’s my notion.”

“Talking about risks, why didn’t you work that Marquis of Lorne racket better? We saw in the papers that the troopers hunted you so close you had to kill him in the ranges.”

Father looked over at us and then began to laugh—not long, and he broke off short. Laughing wasn’t much in his line.

“Killed him, did we? And a horse worth nigh on to two thousand pounds. You ought to have known your old father better than that. We did kill a chestnut horse, one we picked out a purpose; white legs, white knee, short under lip, everything quite regular. We even fed him for a week on prairie grass, just like the Marquis had been eating. Bless you, we knew how to work all that. We deceived Windhall his own self, and he thinks he’s pretty smart. No! the Marquis is all safe—you know where.”

I opened my eyes and stared at father.

“You’ve some call to crow if you can work things like that. How you ever got him away beats me; but not more than how you managed to keep him hid with a ring of troopers all round you from every side in the district.”

“We had friends,” father said. “Me and Warrigal done all the travelling by night. No one but him could have gone afoot, I believe, much less led a blood horse through the beastly scrub and ranges he showed us. But the devil himself could not beat him and that little brute Bilbah in rough country.”