Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One smith was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales at eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the hoof to smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode on, and, a hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the notebook he drew from his hip-pocket.
He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half- auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for the railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning butter- truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of the dairy.
The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from 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."
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?"