"Beef is falling again, William," he announced when he had Billy quite to himself. "Judging from present indications, it will go quite as low as last fall--even lower, perhaps. If it does, I fail to see how we can ship with any but disastrous financial results."
"Well, what yuh going to do, then?" Billy spoke more irritably than would have been possible a year ago. "Yuh can't winter again and come out with anything but another big loss. Yuh haven't even got hay to feed what few calves there is. And, as I told yuh, the way the fences are strung from hell to breakfast, the stock's bound to die off like poisoned flies every storm that comes."
"I have kept that in mind, William. I saw that I should be quite unable to make a payment this fall, so I went to Mr. Brown to make what arrangements I could. To be brief, William, Brown has offered to buy back this place and the stock, on much the same terms he offered me. I believe he wants to put this section of land under irrigation from his ditch and exploit it with the rest; the cattle he can turn into his immense fields until they can be shipped at a profit. However, that is not our affair and need not concern us.
"He will take the stock as they run, at twenty-one dollars a head. If, as you estimate, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of six thousand, that will dear me of all indebtedness and leave a few thousands with which to start again--at something more abreast of the times, I hope. I am rather inclined to take the offer. What do you think of it, William?"
"I guess yuh can't do any better. Twenty-one dollars a head as they run--and everything else thrown in, uh course?"
"That is the way I bought it, yes," said Dill.
"Well, we ought to scare up six thousand, if we count close. I know old Brown fine; he'll hold yuh right down t' what yuh turn over, and he'll tally so close he'll want to dock yuh if a critter's shy one horn--damn him. That's why I was wishing you'd bought that way, instead uh lumping the price and taking chances. Only, uh course, I knew just about what was on the range."
"Then I will accept the offer. I have been merely considering it until I saw you. And perhaps it will be as well to go about it immediately."