If men meet out there in the land of far horizons and do not stop for a word or two, it is generally because there is bad feeling between them; and horses learn quickly the ways of their masters.
"Hello," greeted Billy tentatively, eying the other measuringly because he was a stranger.

"Pretty soft going, ain't it ?" He referred to the half-thawed trail.
"Ye-es," hesitated the other, glancing diffidently down at the trail and then up at the neighboring line of disconsolate, low hills.
"Ye-es, it is." His eyes came back and met Billy's deprecatingly, almost like those of a woman who feels that her youth and her charm have slipped behind her and who does not quite know whether she may still be worthy your attention.

"Are you acquainted with this--this part of the country ?" "Well," Billy had got out his smoking material, from force of the habit with which a range-rider seizes every opportunity for a smoke, and singled meditatively a leaf.

"Well, I kinda know it by sight, all right." And in his voice lurked a pride of knowledge inexplicable to one who has not known and loved the range-land.

"I guess you'd have some trouble finding a square foot of it that I ain't been over," he added, mildly boastful.
If one might judge anything from a face as blank as that of a china doll, both the pride and the boastfulness were quite lost upon the stranger.