“I mean leasing.  We got to beat Brown to it.  We got to start in and lease up all the land we can get our claws on.  I ain’t none desirable uh trying to make yuh a millionaire, Dilly, whilst we’ve only got one lone section uh land and about twelve thousand head uh stock, and somebody else aiming to throw a big lot uh cattle onto our range.  I kinda shy at any contract the size uh that one.  I’ve got to start the wagons out, if this weather holds good, and I want to go with ’em—­for a while, anyhow—­and see how things stack up on the range.  And what you’ve got to do is to go and lease every foot uh land you can.  Eh?  State land.  All the land around here almost is State land—­all that’s surveyed and that ain’t held by private owners.  And State land can be leased for a term uh years.

“The way they do it, yuh start in and go over the map all samee flea; yuh lease a section here and there and skip one and take the next, and so on, and then if yuh need to yuh throw a fence around the whole blame chunk—­and there yuh are.  No, it ain’t cheating, because if anybody don’t like it real bad, they can raise the long howl and make yuh revise your fencing; but in this neck uh the woods folks don’t howl over a little thing like that, because you could lift up your own voice over something they’ve done, and there’d be a fine, pretty chorus!  So that’s what yuh can do if yuh want to—­but anyway, yuh want to get right after that leasing.  It’ll cost yuh something, but we’re just plumb obliged to protect ourselves.  See?”

At that point he heard Flora laugh, and got up hastily, remembering the presence of the Pilgrim on the ranch.

“I see, and I will think it over and take what precautionary measures are necessary and possible.”

Billy, not quite sure that he had sufficiently impressed Dill with the importance of the matter, turned at the door and looked in again, meaning to add an emphatic word or two; but when he saw that Dill was staring round-eyed at nothing at all, and that Lamb was lying sprawled wide open on the floor, his face relaxed from its anxious determination.

“I got his think-works going—­he’ll do the rest,” he told himself satisfiedly, and pushed the subject from him.  Just now he wanted to make sure the Pilgrim wasn’t getting more smiles than were coming to him—­and if you had left the decision of that with Billy, the Pilgrim would have had none at all.

“I wisht he’d do something I could lay my finger on—­damn him,” he reflected.  “I can’t kick him out on the strength uh my own private opinion.  I’d just simply lay myself wide open to all kinds uh remarks.  I ain’t jealous; he ain’t got any particular stand-in with Flora—­but if I started action on him, that’s what the general verdict would be.  Oh, thunder!”