"Thursday, if the Union Pacific keeps its word, which it does about one time in three. Forty cars. Beeves off the Thistle range and some younger stuff off the new range on the Halfmoon, the Double Box." He set the hoof down while I went to the fire. "I have a man coming from Dundee. A Mr. Lennox Fairlie, of the board. He is coming to count my cattle."
He said it lightly, but the lightness was a coat put on over something.
"Count them," I said. "All of them? On the range?"
"Every last horn and hoof, if the board has its way. There has been some talk in Edinburgh and Dundee." He took a cigar from his coat, looked at it, and put it back again, because he knew I did not like smoke in the shop with the coal dust about. "You will have heard of the book count."
I had. Everybody in the cattle country had. No man could ride out on a million acres of open range and count the beasts one by one, so you bought a herd on the seller's tally books, and each year you added the calves you supposed had been born and took off the beeves you shipped and something for winter loss, and the number went on, and the shareholders in Scotland received their dividends and were happy. And then a hard winter came and the cattle died in their thousands against the drift fences, and the books went on just the same.
"Your books are good, I should think," I said. "You've always been a careful man."
He did not answer that directly. He watched Zeke cutting rod for a while, the boy's arm going up and down, the hardy taking each bite clean.
"I have been careful," he said at last. "I have been careful for eleven years. I have ridden over every foot of that range. And I have been, as you say, a careful man." He shook his head. "Never mind. It is a board matter and a dull one. Mr. Fairlie is a decent sort. He'll see the beeves loaded on Thursday and go home and tell them we are all honest men out here and the grass is good. Is that shoe ready?"