“Hell!  Anything else?”

“I believe not—­except that he has completed his fencing and has turned in a large number of cattle.  I say completed, though strictly speaking he has not.  He has completed the great field south of the creek and east of us.  But Mr. Walland was saying that Brown intends to fence a tract to the north of us, either this fall or early in the spring.  I know to a certainty that he has a good many sections leased there.  I tried to obtain some of it last spring and could not.”  Into the voice of Dill had crept a note of discouragement.

“Well, don’t yuh worry none, Dilly.  I’m here to see yuh pull out on top, and you’ll do it, too.  You’re a crackerjack when it comes to the fine points uh business, and I sure savvy the range end uh the game, so between us we ought to make good, don’t yuh think?  You just keep your eye on Brown, and if yuh can slap him in the face with an injunction or anything, don’t yuh get a sudden attack uh politeness and let him slide.  I’ll look after the cow brutes myself—­and if I ain’t good for it, after all these years, I ought to be kicked plumb off the earth.  The time has gone by when we could ride over there and haze his bunch clear out uh the country on a high lope, with our six guns backing our argument.  I kinda wish,” he added pensively, “we hadn’t got so damn’ decent and law-abiding.  We could get action a heap more speedy and thorough with a dozen or fifteen buckaroos that liked to fight and had lots uh shells and good hosses.  Why, I could have the old man’s bunch shoveling dirt into that ditch to beat four aces, in about fifteen minutes, if—­”

“But, as you say,” Dill cut in anxiously, “we are decent and law-abiding, and such a procedure is quite out of the question.”

“Aw, I ain’t meditating no moonlight attack, Dilly—­but the boys would sure love to do it if I told ’em to get busy, and I reckon we could make a better job of it than forty-nine injunctions and all kinds uh law sharps.”

“Careful, William.  I used to be a ‘law sharp’ myself,” protested Dill, pulling his face into a smile.  “And I must own I feel anxious over this irrigation project of Brown’s.  He is going to work upon a large scale—­a very large scale—­for a private ranch.  You have made it plain to me, William, how vitally important a wide, unsettled country is to successful cattle raising; and since then I have thought deeply upon the subject.  I feel sure that Mr. Brown is not going to start a cattle ranch.”

“If he ain’t, then what—­”

“I am not prepared at present to make a statement, even to you, William.  I never enjoyed recanting.  But one thing I may say.  Mr. Brown has so far kept well within his legal rights, and we have no possible ground for protest.  So you see, perhaps we would better turn our entire attention to our own affairs.”

“Sure.  I got plenty uh troubles uh my own,” Billy agreed, more emphatically than he intended.