“Excuse me!” exclaimed Nelson.  “I thought this was just a dinner!”

He was a big man, perhaps fifty years of age, with a smooth-shaven ruddy face.  He wore a sheepskin vest over his corduroy coat, and one of the small boys bleated.  Grandma Brown promptly smacked him on the mouth.

“Will you come in and eat?” asked Fowler.

“No, thank you,” replied the Mormon; adding with a determined thrust of his lower jaw, “I want Scott Parsons to come out.  I won’t disturb the rest of you.”

“What do you want of me?” demanded Scott from his place between Judith and Inez.

“Come outside and I’ll tell you.”

Scott grunted derisively.  “It sure-gawd has got to be something more than that to win me out of this position.  I’m the envy of Lost Chief, old sheep-man!”

There was a general laugh.

“Go on out and see what he wants, Scott,” said Peter.

Scott sighed and detached himself.  The congregation waited a moment; then curiosity had its own way and the chapel emptied itself into the yard.  Several Mormons were sitting their horses before the line of quivering aspens that bound the little clearing.  A big red bull was tied to the corral fence.  Elijah Nelson remained on the doorstep.

“Well,” he began, “since you are all out here, I’ll say to all of you what I rode down here to say to Scott Parsons, he and anybody that may be helping him are hereby served notice that they’ve got to keep out of Mormon Valley.  We are decent, God-fearing Americans, and we are not going to stand being robbed any more.”

“How do you mean, being robbed?” asked Peter Knight.

“Well, I brought this along as a sample,” replied Elijah.  “Some five years or so ago, I had some cattle grazing on Lost Chief and somebody ran off a dozen head, this bull among the lot.  Anybody that can’t do a better job of rebranding than this, ought to try another line of business.”

There was an interested craning of necks toward the huge brand offered in evidence; then every one looked at Scott.  Scott said nothing, and Elijah went on.

“That fellow Parsons patrolled Mormon Creek, that heads up at Lost Chief Springs, all summer.  He built a brush dam and threw the water out of our creek into his own ditch, whenever he felt like it.  I didn’t want to start a fight going.  That’s not a Mormon’s business.  We are peaceful folks, homesteading the wilderness.  It was a wet summer and we managed to get enough water out of White Horse Creek to take care of us.  But right is right and wrong is wrong and we aren’t going to stand that next summer.  Last week, a coyote was fastened into my chicken run; and last night a mountain lion with a trap hanging to his leg got into my corral, where I had two foals, and he killed them before I could get out.  The trap had Scott Parsons’ name cut onto it.  I don’t know who is helping him, if any, but I’m here with my neighbors to serve notice that it’s got to stop.  I see you’ve got a preacher here now.  I begin to have hopes you may become peaceable yet.”