“We had more than eight thousand when we came here,” she said. “That is why the house is big and the stable. My father drove three trail herds in here from the Pecos. But we lost most of them.”
“Oh, I see,” Rock commented.
“So, as I said, I have about eight hundred cattle on the range. I have a rider with the Maltese Cross round-up. I need another rider on the ranch.”
“But if you keep a rep with the Cross,” Rock interpolated, “does it matter if your stock does scatter considerable? The outfit would brand the calves and ship your beef as long as you supply a man and a string of horses.”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I see you know range work. I suppose what you say is true. Only I have reasons for handling cattle in my own way. But that’s all beside the point. What you want to know is whether you’ll be expected to step into a dead man’s boots and take the risk of getting shot for some reason or other, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rock admitted. “I have no hankering to inherit a private war along with a forty-dollar job.”
“It’ll be fifty if you work for me,” she said. “There may be a risk. Not if you can be around here and work for me, without getting sentimental and jealous. That was what got Doc killed, I believe. I’m sure it was.”
Perhaps Rock looked his curiosity and surprise. The girl stood up. She had worked, as she talked, and finished milking the first cow.
“I had better explain a little,” she said calmly. “As I said, four years ago we came in here with nearly nine thousand cattle and a dozen riders in our outfit. I was eighteen then. I had just finished school. Our first winter here was a bad one—a terrible winter of hard frost and deep snow and storms. In the spring a round-up out two months gathered less than five hundred cattle in our brand. Betty was born that winter, and mamma died. The next summer a horse fell on my father, injured his back, so that he was a helpless cripple for nearly a year. Then he died. He left all there was to me and Betty. I have full control of everything until she comes of age. So I have managed here ever since. Mostly with one man, sometimes with two.”