“Twin Peaks.”

“How’s the feed?” came the inevitable cowman’s question.

“Pore, pore,” replied the mountaineer.  “Ain’t never seen it so short.  My cattle’s pore.”

“Well, you’re overstocked; that’s what’s the matter,” spoke up some one boldly.

George Pollock turned his face toward this voice.

“Don’t you suppose I know it?” he demanded.  “There’s a thousand head too many on my range alone.  I’ve been crowded and pushed all summer, and I ain’t got a beef steer fit to sell, right now.  My cattle are so pore I’ll have to winter ’em on foothill winter feed.  And in the spring they’ll be porer.”

“Well, why don’t you all get together and reduce your stock?” persisted the questioner.  “Then there’ll be a show for somebody.  I got three packs and two saddlers that ain’t fatted up from a two weeks’ trip in August.  You got the country skinned; and that ain’t no dream.”

George Pollock turned so fiercely that his listeners shrank.

“Get together!  Reduce our stock!” he snarled, shaken from the customary impassivity of the mountaineer, “It ain’t us!  We got the same number of cattle, all we mountain men, that our fathers had afore us!  There ain’t never been no trouble before.  Sometimes we crowded a little, but we all know our people and we could fix things up, and so long as they let us be, we got along all right.  It don’t pay us to overstock.  What for do we keep cattle?  To sell, don’t we?  And we can’t sell ’em unless they’re fat.  Summer feed’s all we got to fat ’em on.  Winter feed’s no good.  You know that.  We ain’t going to crowd our range.  You make me tired!”

“What’s the trouble then?”

“Outsiders,” snapped Pollock.  “Folks that live on the plains and just push in to summer their cattle anyhow, and then fat ’em for the market on alfalfa hay.  This ain’t their country.  Why don’t they stick to their own?”

“Can’t you handle them?  Who are they?”

“It ain’t they,” replied George Pollock sullenly.  “It’s him.  It’s the richest man in California, with forty ranches and fifty thousand head of cattle and a railroad or two and God knows what else.  But he’ll come up here and take a pore man’s living away from him for the sake of a few hundred dollars saved.”

“Old Simeon, hey?” remarked the ranchman thoughtfully.

“Simeon Wright,” said Pollock.  “The same damn old robber.  Forest Reserves!” he sneered bitterly.  “For the use of the public!  Hell!  Who’s the public? me and you and the other fellow?  The public is Simeon Wright.  What do you expect?”

“Didn’t Plant say he was going to look into the matter for next year?” Bob inquired from the other side the fire.

“Plant!  He’s bought,” returned Pollock contemptuously.  “He’s never seen the country, anyway; and he never will.”

He rose and kicked the fire together.

“Good night!” he said shortly, and, retiring to the shadows, rolled himself in a blanket and turned his back on the visitors.