“No; that is, very little.”
“Well, it’s just this: Before he came here we were all playing the game peacefully together. Each of us 109 had just about enough land, with the cut hay and the winter pastures, to pull through the winter, and there was just enough free grazing up in the edges of the timber to keep the cattle going through the summer and early fall.”
“That was government land,” explained Claire.
“And open to all of us,” added Seth. “We never had any dispute with the Englishman who owned Haig’s ranch before him, and he got fair treatment, though he wasn’t here much of the time to look after it. We heard he had some family trouble, and one day when he’d been gone a long time––”
“That’s four years now,” interrupted Claire.
“Yes. Haig showed up, and said the ranch was his. He started in straight off to hog the whole thing. Bought a thousand head of cattle––that made thirteen hundred head––almost as many as all the rest of us had put together. He turned the thirteen hundred into the open range, and hired men to keep them moving the right way for the good feed, and––”
“He had a perfect right to do that, you see,” Claire put in hastily.
“Legal right, maybe,” Huntington went on. “But he didn’t have any real right to more than his share. We organized, bunched our cattle, and stayed with ’em. That way we were stronger than he, and soon had his cattle starving. Then he disappeared, and we didn’t see anything of him for three weeks. And what do you suppose the damned skunk––”
“Seth!” cried Claire warningly, with an anxious look at Marion.
Marion merely shook her head.