CHAPTER XXIIIOut in the barn, I met up with Shorty and big Rusty McArdle. Rusty, he looked pretty sad, but he grinned and waved at me, but Shorty, he only glared when I said good morning to him.
“Hey, Shorty, what’s eating you?” says Rusty. “Don’t you see the Big Boy?”
“Damn the Big Boy, and you, too,” says Shorty, and he went off to catch him a hoss for the day’s work.
“What’s up?” says Rusty to me.
“Rusty,” says I, “there is so damn much in the air around this here ranch that’s wrong, that I can’t tell where to begin to talk about it. Besides, what I feel is mostly guesswork, and not many facts. But I’ll tell you one thing, to put in your pipe and smoke. Old Henry Randal has just blowed in, and he’ll start counting cows, to-day—and he’s gunna find that the count is short.”
I was rig
