Riding forth one day, in cowboy attire, along the line fence that held
in the cattle from the cultivated valley lands, he came upon Philip
Davison engaged in angry controversy with a young man of somewhat
shabby appearance. The shrewd little eyes of this man observed Justin
closely. Beside the fence was a dirty prairie schooner, from which the
man had descended, and to it two big raw-boned farm horses were
hitched. Eyeing Justin the man pushed back his hat, then awkwardly
extended his hand.
“So you’re Justin, air ye—the little boy I met one’t? I reckon you
don’t know me? I wouldn’t knowed you, but fer hearin’ the name.”
Justin acknowledged that the man’s face was unfamiliar.
“Well, I’m William Sanders!” He plucked a spear of grass and began to
splinter it with his teeth. “I landed hyer some seasons ago with Mr.
Fogg, and stayed all night with the doctor over there. Mebbe you’ll
remember me now. I’ve thought of you a good many times sense then.
You’ve growed a lot. I was thinkin’ about you t’other day while on my
way hyer; and a fortune teller I went to in Pueblo picked you out
straight off, from the cards she told with. She showed me the jack of
hearts, and said that was the young feller I had in mind. Sing’lar,
wasn’t it?”
Justin recalled this young man now, and shook his hand heartily.
“It was singular,” he admitted.
“We’ll have to talk over old times by and by,” said Sanders, amiably.
But Davison was not pleased to see Sanders, whom he had never met
before. Sanders, it appeared, had bought a quarter-section of land not
far from the stream, and had now come to occupy it. Trouble had arisen
over the fact that it was included in a large area of mortgaged and
government land which Davison had fenced for his cattle. Sanders was
demanding that he should cut the fence.
“Cut it and let me git my land,” he insisted, “er I’ll cut it fer ye.
I know my rights under the law.”
“You can’t farm there, and you know you can’t,” said Davison, in a
tone of expostulation. “This is simply a piece of blackmail. You want
me to pay you not to trouble me about the fence. But I won’t do it. If
I did I’d have dozens of men landed on me demanding the same thing.
You know that nothing but bunch grass will grow on that land.”
Though he chewed placidly on the grass spear, Sanders’ little eyes
glittered.
“Cut the fence and let me git to my land, er I’ll cut it fer ye!”
His love for Lucy, which extended now to Philip Davison as a warm
regard and intense boyish admiration, would have inclined Justin to
the ranchman’s side; but it was clear that Sanders was in the right
and Davison in the wrong.
“I’ll see you again, Mr. Sanders,” he said; and rode on while the two
men were still wrangling. It was remarkable, he thought, that Sanders
should have remembered him so long, and more remarkable that a fortune
teller who had never seen him should be able to describe him even in a
dim and uncertain way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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