“I know the cattle are not to blame,” I retorted, with a good deal of temper. “I just wish that their master himself would come out and trample on our corn and wallow in our wheat field, instead of driving his cattle up so that they may do it; I’d set Guard on him with the greatest pleasure.”
“Now, now, Leslie, you shouldn’t talk so!” father remonstrated gently.
But here Jessie, whose disposition is much more placid than mine, broke in, abruptly:
“I don’t blame Leslie for feeling so, father. Only think, we’ve been on this place nearly five years, and we’ve never yet raised a crop, because Mr. Horton’s cattle, no matter where they may be ranging, always get up here just in time—the right time—to do the most damage. The other neighbors’ cattle hardly ever stray into our fields, and when they do the neighbors are good about it. Think of the time when Mr. Rollins’s herd got into the corn field and ate the corn rows down, one after another. Mr. Rollins came after them himself, and paid the damage, without a word of complaint. Besides, he said that it shouldn’t happen again; and it didn’t. When has Mr. Horton ever done a thing like that?”
“He’s been kept busy other ways,” father said, and his voice had none of the resentment that Jessie’s expressed. “The last time that his cattle got in here I went to see him about it, and he said that the field was a part of the range, being unfenced, and that any lawyer in the United States would sustain him in saying so. He was quite right, too—only he was not neighborly.”
“Neighborly! I should say not,” Jessie exclaimed, with a lowering brow. “His horses have trampled down our garden and girdled all our fruit trees, even to the Seckel pear that mother brought from grandfather’s.”
“I know; it is very trying,” father said, stifling a sigh; “but it can do no good to dwell on these things, daughter. An enemy of any kind does you more injury when he destroys your peace of mind, and causes you to harbor revengeful feelings, than he can possibly achieve in any other way. We must keep up our courage, and make the best of present circumstances, bad as they sometimes are. A change is bound to come.”
“Me wants more breakfuss,” Ralph broke in, suddenly, extending his empty milk-cup toward me, his chief servitor. I refilled it from the pitcher beside me, and as I absently crumbled bits of bread into it I sought enlightenment. “I never quite understood, father, why Mr. Horton is so spiteful toward us.”
“It is easily understood, Leslie. He wants this homestead claim, and hopes to weary us into giving it up.”