scoutin' around lookin' for your kind of men, but I'm here to tell you they're plenty scarce. I don't suppose you've heard anything about the quarantine guard we're puttin' on to keep Texas cattle out of this state?"
Dunham admitted he had heard about it, but kept to himself his late experience and ignominious rejection by Moore. He had a secret exultation in the thought of getting on that exclusive force, although he wasn't going to jump at anything again in that country. He wasn't sure yet whether it was his kind of a job.
Garland went on to tell him what Dunham had known since early that morning: that the Texas cattle were coming through earlier than expected, due, he supposed, to the uncommonly forward spring they'd had down in that country and the plentiful forage along the way.
The Texas cattlemen were in a rush to throw their beef on the market, there being a scarcity of animals fit for the butcher's block at that time, Kansas cattle not yet finished off sufficiently. They ought to have three or four weeks longer on the grass, Garland said, talking so much on that phase of it that Dunham began to suspect the fear of Texas fever was not the only motive behind this concentrated movement to stop the southern herds at the border.
Garland disclosed the fact that he was a cattleman himself, no great news to Dunham. His ranch was in the valley of the Arkansas River, but he ranged his herds to the Cherokee Nation line. He said Dunham could get a lot of experience riding the quarantine line that summer which would be useful to him if he wanted
