Clint Wadley, massive and powerful, slouched back in his chair with one leg thrown over an arm of it. He puffed at a corncob pipe, and through the smoke watched narrowly with keen eyes from under heavy grizzled brows a young man standing on the porch steps.
"So now you know what I expect, young fellow," he said brusquely. "Take it or leave it; but if you take it, go through."
Arthur Ridley smiled. "Thanks, I'll take it."
The boy was not so much at ease as his manner suggested. He knew that the owner of the A T O was an exacting master. The old cattleman was game himself. Even now he would fight at the drop of the hat if necessary. In the phrase which he had just used, he would "go through" anything he undertook. Men who had bucked blizzards with him in the old days admitted that Clint would do to take along. But Ridley's awe of him was due less to his roughness and to the big place he filled in the life of the Panhandle than to the fact that he was the father of his daughter. It was essential to Arthur's plans that he stand well with the old-timer.
Though he did not happen to know it, young Ridley was a favorite of the cattle king. He had been wished on him by an old friend, but there was something friendly and genial about the boy that won a place for him. His smile was modest and disarming, and his frank face was better than any letter of recommendation.
But though Wadley was prepared to like him, his mind held its reservations. The boy had come from the East, and the standards of that section are not those of the West. The East asks of a man good family, pleasant manners, a decent reputation, and energy enough to carry a man to success along conventional lines. In those days the frontier West demanded first that a man be game, and second that he be one to tie to. He might be good or bad, but whichever he was, he, must be efficient to make any mark in the turbulent country of the border. Was there a hint of slackness in the jaw of this good-looking boy? Wadley was not sure, but he intended to find out.
"You'll start Saturday. I'll meet you at Tascosa two weeks from to-day. Understand?" The cattleman knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. The interview was at an end.
Young Ridley nodded. "I'll be there, sir--with the six thousand dollars safe as if they were in a vault."