The cabin was the rudest kind of log affair, with a huge stone
fireplace in one end, deer antlers and coyote skins on the wall,
saddles and cowboys' traps in a corner, a nice, large, promising
cupboard, and a table and chairs. Jim threw wood on a smoldering
fire, that soon blazed and crackled cheerily.

I sank down into a chair with a feeling of blessed relief. Ten
days of desert ride behind me! Promise of wonderful days before
me, with the last of the old plainsmen. No wonder a sweet sense
of ease stole over me, or that the fire seemed a live and
joyously welcoming thing, or that Jim's deft maneuvers in
preparation of supper roused in me a rapt admiration.

"Twenty calves this spring!" cried Jones, punching me in my sore
side. "Ten thousand dollars worth of calves!"

He was now altogether a changed man; he looked almost young; his
eyes danced, and he rubbed his big hands together while he plied
Frank with questions. In strange surroundings--that is, away from
his Native Wilds, Jones had been a silent man; it had been almost
impossible to get anything out of him. But now I saw that I
should come to know the real man. In a very few moments he had
talked more than on all the desert trip, and what he said, added
to the little I had already learned, put me in possession of some
interesting information as to his buffalo.

Some years before he had conceived the idea of hybridizing
buffalo with black Galloway cattle; and with the characteristic
determination and energy of the man, he at once set about finding
a suitable range. This was difficult, and took years of