No light touch was his upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back helpless and amazed upon their hocks.
His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and character within.

Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his great distress, his thick-set figure indicated strength without agility, solidity without resilience.

He had a pleasant, open face, with a kindly, twinkling blue eye that goes with a merry heart, with a genial, sunny soul.

But there was in the blue eye and in the open face, for all the twinkles and the smiles, a certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the keen man of business, and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of resolute strength.

A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity for humour, but with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that always surprised those who judged him lightly.
The men were friends, and had been comrades more or less during those pioneer days that followed their arrival in the country from Scotland some dozen years ago.