“Yes, the country's settling up pretty fast,” conceded the man in the doorway.
“Well, by golly!” bellowed Slim, popping up from below on a heaving horse. Slim was getting fatter every year, and his horses always puffed when they climbed a hill under his weight. His round eyes glared resentfully at the man and the shack and at the three who were sitting there so quietly on their horses—just as if they had ridden up for a friendly call. “Ain't this shack on your land?” he spluttered to Andy.
“Why, yes. It is, just right at present.” Andy admitted, following the man's example in the matter of a smoke, except that Andy rolled and lighted a cigarette. “He's going to move it, though.”
“Oh. Thanks.” With the one-sided smile.
“Say, you needn't thank ME,” Andy protested in his polite tone. “YOU'RE going to move it, you know.”
“You may know, but I don't,” corrected the other.
“Oh, that's all right. You may not know right now, but don't let that worry yuh. This is sure a great country for pilgrims to wise up in.”
Big Medicine came up over the hill a hundred feet or so from them; goggled a minute at the bold trespass and came loping across the intervening space. “Say, by cripes, what's this mean?” he bawled. “Claim-jumper, hey? Say, young feller, do you realize what you're doing—squattin' down on another man's land. Don't yuh know claim-jumpers git shot, out here? Or lynched?”
“Oh, cut out all that rough stuff!” advised the man wearily. “I know who you are, and what your bluff is worth. I know you can't held a foot of land if anybody is a mind to contest your claims. I've filed a contest on this eighty, here, and I'm going to hold it. Let that soak into your minds. I don't want any trouble—I'm even willing to take a good deal in the way of bluster, rather than have trouble. But I'm going to stay. See?” He waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating to a disputant.
“Oh, all right—if that's the way you feel about it,” Andy replied indifferently, and turned away. “Come on, boys—no use trying to bluff that gazabo. He's wise.”