“Sure, I know it,” growled Joel. “Why wouldn’t I know it? Cost me a night’s sleep, didn’t it? Oh, I know it, all right! But what I’m gettin’ at is: Every critter in this outfit has got to earn his way; got to pay for his keep. If he don’t, then he’s got to stop eatin’ our grub. Treve pays for himself when he works. And when he don’t work, he’s dead wood. Dos Hermanos Ranch can’t afford dead wood. We don’t hire Treve to go drivin’ to Santa Carlotta in lux’ry and to traipse around on loafin’ walks with you. Nor yet we don’t hire him to snore in the bunk room, nights, when he’d ought to be on guard. If that’s what he’s goin’ to do, the sooner we feed him a lump of lead, the better.”
The old fellow returned to the task of demolishing his breakfast. He ate surlily and without gusto. He did all things surlily and without gusto.
Royce Mack did not speak for a moment or two. He had been waiting for this outbreak ever since the mischance at the fold. It was like old Fenno not to have blurted it in the first flush of the excitement; but to wait until he had marshaled his facts and had cooled down to normal.
Royce, too, had had time for preparation. Presently he made reply; schooling himself to calmness and even to an assumption of good humor.
“Treve isn’t dead wood,” he said. “If he’d never done another lick of work, since we had him, he’d have paid for a lifetime’s keep by rounding up that bunch of strays, last night. You remember where he found them. And they were still traveling—still heading north. By daylight, they’d have been over the edge of the Triple Bar range. And you can figure what that outfit of cow-men would have done to ’em. We’d never have seen wool nor hoof of one of ’em again. The Triple Bar or any other of the cattle crowd wouldn’t ask better than to shoot up a flock of sheep that strayed onto their range.”
Joel Fenno kept on munching his food, interspersing this with noisy swigs of coffee. He said nothing. Mack resumed:
“Besides, we’ve got Zit and Rastus, for the regular herding and for night guard. That isn’t supposed to be Treve’s job. They’re both born to it. They’re little and black and squat and splayfooted and they can’t be made homelier by galloping all day and every day, over hardpan, for hundreds of miles in the broiling sun. Neither of them has got Treve’s brain or his looks. I don’t want him turned into a splayfoot drudge. He earns his keep, good and plenty, here on the home tract. We agreed to that, long ago.”
“You agreed to it,” mumbled Fenno, his mouth full, his eyes glum. “I didn’t. I haven’t been jawin’. But I’ve been watchin’. An’ here’s where we come to a showdown. Till we got that cur, there wasn’t any loafin’ here. Since then, you go on silly walks with him, when you might be workin’. That comes out of my pocket. You let him sleep in the bunk room, like he was a Christian. The Dos Hermanos is a workin’ outfit. No time for measly pets and the like. It’s got to stop.”
“I don’t neglect my job, by taking Treve up into the hills or along the coulée for a tramp, Sundays,” denied Mack. “Better do that, on my rest day, than play poker in the mess shack or ride over to Santa Carlotta and get drunk on bootleg. He’s my chum. If you don’t like him—”