Ralph Stock

“ So you may imagine his home life on a small ranch in the Cypress Hills.
"'Tisn't that he ain't willing," Mr. Tate informed me during our evening session of stick-whittling and small-talk on the top rail of the horse corral. "The kid tries all right, and he's got sand, but it just don't seem to be in him, that's all."
"What?" I asked.
"Everything," said Mr. Tate, with a gesture embracing the narrow yet spacious limits of life at High Butte. "He, can't ride, and never will, I reckon. Not built for it. Just a natural born sack of oats in the saddle. ”

“ Tate.
"Heredity's a funny thing," I mused.
"Sounds like it," said Mr. Tate. "Maybe that's what's wrong with Jim. Is it hard to cure?"
"Very," said I.
A stick- whittling silence fell between us, and I was aware that, with the peculiar delicacy of dwellers in the wild, Mr. Tate was refraining from further inquiry because he knew there was something radically wrong with myself. As a matter of fact, I had come to High Butte to die, and High Butte didn't let me. But that's neither here nor there.
"Hi!" bellowed Mr. Tate, with an unexpectedness that nearly toppled me from the rail. ”

“ I gave it up.
"Come, Clem, Meg!" Mr. Tate led his more normal progeny to the stables, where, after a brief conclave, they mounted and rode off in different directions.
They should have found Jim easily enough. On the prairie a pedestrian is such a phenomenon that cattle flee from him at sight or attack him as a menace beyond their ken. I pictured the lad a minute, moving speck on the vast plains, migrating with the instinct of a bird to more desirable climes. ”

“ I told him once, while beating up the lake.
"What's that?" said Jim.
His ignorance of anything beyond the prairie was almost unbelievable until you remembered his environment and upbringing.
"A man who makes his living by doing just what we're doing now," I explained. ”

“ Obstacles? What are obstacles to the migrant bird or youth with the call of the sea in its veins?
Where Sucker Creek, a busy stream, left the lake, the rushes were trampled down. Half a mile further on a corrugated iron lee-board lay wedged in the willow stump that had wrenched it from the gunwale. There was no need to look further. "Good luck to him!" said I, and, not without a twinge of envy, retraced my steps to the ranch.
But the matter of Jim's disappearance was not to be so easily disposed of. There was the family, and families have a knack of wearing one down. ”

“ The Cypress Hills are a watershed, the birthplace of many a tributary to mighty rivers. Northward they flow at long last into Hudson's Bay; southward, into the Gulf of Mexico. What was to prevent him drifting with the current from Saskatchewan into Montana, and so through the Dakotas southward and still south? ”