"Why, I think it all the more reason why it should pay a business profit," drawls Dick. "Only last week I heard you complainin' somethin' fierce because you had to put up for a new freight-wagon. The great trouble with you is that you don't have no system. You need a manager, a man who takes an interest in modern progress, a man who sees that the rest o' the men pay a profit. I don't mean a foreman, you got plenty o' them. I mean a business man. You ain't no business man; you don't like it." Well, Jabez was stupefied. He'd never had no wage-earner dump advice on him before, an' here was a tramp, as you might say, who started in by telling him that what he really needed was some one to run his business for him. He didn't fly up through. He just rose an' gave Dick a searchin' look, an' then he meandered up to the house; an' you could tell by the very droop of his shoulders that what he was doin' was thinkin'. The upshot of it was that when Flappy was hauled out to the ranch the next week, an' as soon as he got so he could tell fire from water, Dick fitted up an office in the North wing; an' about fifteen minutes afterward we all felt the difference. From that on everything ran like a round-up. Dick didn't boss none, he just pointed out the best way, an' we did it. All those answers we had told him about calves an' winter hay an' such-like had simply gone in one ear--an' stuck to the inside of his mental gearing. He discovered that Jabez had been stuck for further orders on most of his supplies, an' had allus managed to win the bottom price whenever it came his turn to make a sale. Well, Dick was a perpetual surprise party. You could tell by the color of his skin that he was an indoor man; but he sat a hoss like a cow puncher, an' as soon as he got things runnin' to suit him on our place he got to makin' side trips to the other ranches. He would spend two hours talkin' about the weather; but at the end o' that time, he knew more about a man's outfit than the owner himself. Then he ordered out a lot of stock papers, an' the first thing we knew, we was askin' him questions about things 'at we'd allus supposed we savvied from tail to muzzle. He seemed to like me more'n the rest, an' chose me out to be his ridin' pal an' what he called an A. D. Kong, which was simply the French for messenger boy; but Dick never unloaded a lot of talk about himself. You wouldn't notice it, but he allus managed to have the other feller do most o' the talkin'.