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more about than anybody else. Could you try that sometime? Just as a change of pace?”
    “Look, the fact is, I didn’t know anything about it before, but once I knew I was coming up here, naturally I took a little time and read up on it. I read Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery, Dawes’ history of the islands, Brennan’s books on the early Parker ranch-”
    “Naturally.” John was shaking his head. “You’re the only guy I know who treats a vacation like a Ph. D. research project. Pathetic.”
    “Well, it was interesting,” Gideon said defensively. “And it wasn’t as if I read every word. I was just skimming.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Anyway, I was really asking about your friend. Axel Torkelsson doesn’t exactly sound like the name of a guy who runs a cattle ranch in Hawaii. How did that come about?”
    “He inherited it from his uncle a few years ago. Magnus Torkelsson. There were nieces and nephews; they all got a piece of the old ranch from old Magnus.”
    Gideon laughed. “Okay, then, let me rephrase the question. How does a guy named Magnus Torkelsson come to be running a big cattle ranch in Hawaii?”
    “Well, actually, that’s a long story,” John said. “But something new just came up on it-”
    “Go ahead and tell me the long story. I’m at your mercy, and I don’t have anything else to do.”
    In the early fifties, John told him, Magnus Torkelsson, along with his equally adventurous brothers Torkel and Andreas, had jumped ship off Kona, from a Swedish freighter that was picking up a shipment of beef cattle from the Parker Ranch, which was then the only cattle ranch of any size in Hawaii. Being quick learners, knowing a good thing when they saw it, and taking an immediate liking to the rolling Kohala hills, which reminded them of the Smaland highlands of their childhood, they used the nest egg they’d been building up to buy two hundred cattle from the Parkers and eight hundred acres from nearby landowners. In their thirties at the time, they called their ranch Hoaloha-“Beloved Friend” in Hawaiian-and their combination of hard work, dedication, and penny-pinching good sense turned it into a money-making proposition after relatively few years. By the time they died, the Hoaloha encompassed over thirty thousand acres and ran a herd of fifteen thousand cattle, mostly Herefords, but also Holsteins, Durhams, Charolais, even a few Angus and Brahmas “Well, see, there’s something you know more about than I do,” Gideon said. “If you asked me ten seconds ago to name five breeds of cattle, I don’t think I could have done it. I’m not sure I could do it now.”
    “Well, remember,” John said, pleased, “I roomed with Axel at college and he used to talk about this stuff a lot. And I still see him every few years. And then I spent a couple of summer vacations working on the ranch.”
    “No, I didn’t know that. So you must know quite a bit about ranching, then.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t… that is, I’m not any kind of… well, yeah.” And then, as he often did with little or no reason, he burst into laughter. John had a wonderfully infectious laugh that crinkled up the skin around his eyes, made his eyes themselves gleam, and rarely failed to make Gideon laugh along with him, as he did now.
    “They brought over their sister Dagmar a couple of years after they got here,” John went on, “and all four of them worked like dogs to make the ranch go. Andreas, the oldest one, he died before I met any of them, but I got to know old Torkel and Magnus and the rest of them pretty well. Real well, in fact.”
    They had climbed to two thousand feet-never a switchback, just one long, steady rise along the flank of the range-and while John nodded to himself, remembering, Gideon gratefully took in the prospect around them. The afternoon shadows had lengthened, adding texture and depth to the rolling countryside. Trees were still sparse, but the duns and ochres of the lowlands had given way to