"I guess, steppin' up smart, I'll be there just about in time for supper," said the boy. And whistling cheerily, he set his feet toward the south and the Moonstone Trail.
After a week of weeding in the vegetable garden, Collie was put to work repairing fence. There were many miles of it, inclosing some twenty thousand acres of grazing-land, and the cross-fencing of the oat, alfalfa, fruit, and vegetable acreage. The fence was forever in need of repair. The heavy winter rains, torrential in the mountains, often washed away entire hillsides, leaving a dozen or so staggering posts held together by the wires, tangled and sagging. Cattle frequently pulled loosened posts from the earth by kneeling under the wire and working through, oblivious to the barbs. Again, "stock gone a little loco" would often charge straight through the rigid and ripping wire barriers as though their strands were of thread. Posts would split in the sun, and staples would drop out, leaving sagging spaces which cattle never failed to find and take advantage of. Trees uprooted by the rain and wind would often fall across the fence.
Altogether, the maintaining of a serviceable fence-line on a well-ordered ranch necessitates eternal vigilance.
The Moonstone Rancho was well ordered under the direct supervision of Walter Stone's foreman, "Brand" Williams. Williams was a Wyoming cowman of the old school; taciturn, lean, sinewy.
Some ten years before, Williams, seeking employment, had ridden over the range with Stone. Returning, the cowman remarked disconsolately, "I like your stock, and I'll tie to you. But, say, it's only playin' at ranchin' on twenty thousand fenced. I was raised in Wyoming."
"All right," Stone had replied. "Play hard and we'll get along first-rate."
Every inch of Brand Williams's six feet was steeped in the astringent of experience. He played hard and prospered, as did his employer.
Collie stood awaiting the foreman's instructions.
"Good. Then you can learn right. Go rope a cayuse--get some staples and that leetle axe in my office, and go to it. There's plenty fence."
The "Go rope a cayuse" momentarily staggered the boy, but he went silently to the corral, secured a riata, and by puzzling the playful ponies by his amateur tactics he finally entangled "Baldy," a white-faced cow-pony of peaceful mien but uncertain disposition.