it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest,
saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center,
which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with
litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping
into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men,
college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and
conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and they
were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a
Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken
Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his
employer.

"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs.
Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked.

"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now,
just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive
and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways."

Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was the veterinary, went
on:

"There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I'd like to send down the
hill."

"What's the matter with them?"

"One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government
mules, but he doesn't know Shires."