"What in thunder have the National Forests to do with the Rim Rock massacre?" The newsman looked up through his glasses.
"And who in thunder is going to ask that?"
Bat tapped the last item sharply with his pencil. "They'll read that and they'll read the other, and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts nine men out of ten will begin jawing and spouting and arguing that if there were no National Forests, there would be no Range Wars. If they draw a false impression, that's the public's look out. If we weren't dealing with damphools, we couldn't fool 'em."
"But it didn't happen on the National Forests."
"But it's only the tenth man who will stop to think that out. You put in one of those big middle page cartoons—National Forests with the Federal sign board, KEEP OFF, the sheep being massacred inside the sign board and the State sheriff unable to go in and stop it—"
"But you didn't say massacred! You said they accidently went over the edge."
"But it's only the tenth man will stop to think that. You run the cartoon, see?" said Bat, and, though he asked it as a question, if sounded final. The news-man went tearing back to the front editorial rooms. Bat went whistling down stairs, two steps at a bounce. At the half-way landing, he paused.
"Say," he yelled up, "you can use the same old cartoon; 'Keep Off the
Grass,' you know."
"Eh?—right," crossly from the front room.
"And say?"