Bob, being an engaging and open-hearted youth, soon gained favour.  Among others he came to know the two Pollock families well.  Jim Pollock, with his large brood, had arrived at a certain philosophical, though watchful, acceptance of life; but George, younger, recently married, and eagerly ambitious, chafed sorely.  The Pollocks had been in the country for three generations.  They inhabited two places on opposite sides of a canon.  These houses possessed the distinction of having the only two red-brick chimneys in the hills.  They were low, comfortable, rambling, vine-clad.

“We always run cattle in these hills,” said George fiercely to Bob, “and got along all right.  But these last three years it’s been bad.  Unless we can fat our cattle on the summer ranges in the high mountains, we can’t do business.  The grazing on these lower hills you just got to save for winter.  You can’t raise no hay here.  Since they begun to crowd us with old Wright’s stock it’s tur’ble.  I ain’t had a head of beef cattle fittin’ to sell, bar a few old cows.  And if I ain’t got cattle to sell, where do I get money to live on?  I always been out of debt; but this year I done put a mortgage on the place to get money to go on with.”

“We can always eat beef, George,” said his wife with a little laugh, “and miner’s lettuce.  We ain’t the first folks that has had hard times—­and got over it.”

“Mebbe not,” agreed George, glancing with furrowed brow at a tiny garment on which Mrs. George was sewing.

Jim Pollock, smoking comfortably in his shirt sleeves before his fire, was not so worried.  His youngest slept in his arms; two children played and tumbled on the floor; buxom Mrs. Pollock bustled here and there on household business; the older children sprawled over the table under the lamp reading; the oldest boy, with wrinkled brow, toiled through the instructions of a correspondence school course.

“George always takes it hard,” said Jim.  “I’ve got six kids, and he’ll have one—­or at most two—­mebbe.  It’s hard times all right, and a hard year.  I had to mortgage, too.  Lord love you, a mortgage ain’t so bad as a porous plaster.  It’ll come off.  One good year for beef will fix us.  We ain’t lost nothing but this year’s sales.  Our cattle are too pore for beef, but they’re all in good enough shape.  We ain’t lost none.  Next year’ll be better.”

“What makes you think so?” asked Bob.

“Well, Smith, he’s superintendent at White Oaks, you know, he’s favourable to us.  I seed him myself.  And even Plant, he’s sent old California John back to look over what shape the ranges are in.  There ain’t no doubt as to which way he’ll report.  Old John is a cattleman, and he’s square.”

One day Bob found himself belated after a fishing excursion to the upper end of the valley.  As a matter of course he stopped over night with the first people whose ranch he came to.  It was not much of a ranch and it’s two-room house was of logs and shakes, but the owners were hospitable.  Bob put his horse into a ramshackle shed, banked with earth against the winter cold.  He had a good time all the evening.