«One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government mules, but he doesn't know Shires.»
Forrest nodded.
«The other has worked for us two years, but he's drinking now, and he takes his hang-overs out on his horses—»
«That's Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, with a cast in his left eye?» Forrest interrupted.
The veterinary nodded.
«I've been watching him,» Forrest concluded. «He was a good man at first, but he's slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down the hill. And send that other fellow—Hopkins, you said?—along with him. By the way, Mr. Hennessy.» As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore off the last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. «You've a new horse-shoer in the shop. How does he strike you?»
«He's too new to make up my mind yet.»
«Well, send him down the hill along with the other two. He can't take your orders. I observed him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie by rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof.»
«He knew better.»
«Send him down the hill,» Forrest repeated, as he tickled his champing mount with the slightest of spur-tickles and shot her out along the road, sidling, head-tossing, and attempting to rear.
Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he murmured aloud, «A fat land, a fat land.» Divers things he saw that did not please him and that won a note in his scribble pad. Completing the circle about the Big House and riding beyond the circle half a mile to an isolated group of sheds and corrals, he reached the objective of the ride: the hospital. Here he found but two young heifers being tested for tuberculosis, and a magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in magnificent condition. Weighing fully six hundred pounds, its bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen of hair shouted out that there was nothing the matter with it. Nevertheless, according to the ranch practice, being a fresh importation from Iowa, it was undergoing the regular period of quarantine. Burgess Premier was its name in the herd books of the association, age two years, and it had cost Forrest five hundred dollars laid down on the ranch.