"Good work," he said.

"It will save them dollars on every load they haul in.

A gambler built it! Do they teach men to use the ax in Montana saloons ?" The corporal smiled, and waited for what he felt would come.

He was no longer the hot-blooded lad who had come out from the old country, for he had felt the bonds of discipline, and been taught restraint and silence on the lonely marches of the prairie.
"I have," he said tentatively, "fancied there was something a little unusual about the thing." Stimson nodded, but his next observation was apparently quite unconnected with the topic.

"You were a raw colt when I got you, Payne, and the bit galled you now and then, but you had good hands on a bridle, and somebody who knew his business had taught you to sit a horse in the old country.