was any use in looking to the business for future returns, or whether he must wipe the slate clean and set his face about other undertakings. For there were other Barretts besides his mother, young female Barretts numbering three.
Long before the days of his enlistment were done, Ed Barrett had figured out his programme. His mother had secured him the opening he desired, a favor which Nearing could not well refuse, considering the past social relations of the families, especially as the candidate for cowboy honors proposed to serve for the experience to be gained, without pay. His eagerness to take up the trail of the family's vanishing fortunes had been so great that Ed virtually had leaped from deck to train, as has been seen, not considering the sensation he might create by his unusual garb in that mountain-locked land.
To learn exactly how many head of cattle carried the Diamond Tail brand; how many men were employed in herding them, and the extent of the payroll; what'the sales in numbers of hoofs and dollars had been during the past three years, where the sales had been made and where the money had gone; the present resources and liabilities, and future prospects—all this young Barrett had set himself the task of learning, expeditiously as might be. Job enough, he realized, to be accomplished under the guise of a greenhorn.
It was difficult to believe Nearing a dishonest man who had lured his friends intentionally into a game to shear them. Barrett's recollections of the senator rose up to refute what, in his heart and conscience, he had
