He cut more hay for winter feeding, and he sowed his meadows to alfalfa that he might increase the crops.

He shipped old cows and dry cows with his fat steers in the fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raised bigger cattle.

Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, they improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was much the same.
It began to look, then, as though J.G.Whitmore was cunningly besting the situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against the encroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range.
And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his own game, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being the same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of his men, the Happy Family of the Flying U.
Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and then laugh while he rakes in the chips.

J.G.Whitmore had been going his way and refusing to grow old for a long time--and then an accident, which is Time's joker, turned the game against him.

He stood for just a second too long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between going forward or back.