“Then Hugh——”
“Then Alice——” And they laughed across the fire. It had become quite easy to laugh at simple, wholesome pleasantries. Yet there was no familiarity here. Alice had told the truth: last names take time; and time, in the West, is precious. Names were designations of people, rather than people the representatives of names. Names didn’t matter and people did.
“Dan called me Alice too,” she went on, suddenly remembering to remind Hugh that he was in the same class, as far as privileges went, with his predecessors. “My father lives down at a place called Horse Creek—and unlike many sheepmen in the West, his whole capital is tied up in this one flock. He isn’t a big sheepman—only a little one. That is what makes it so important that we win.
“He bought the stock from an old friend to whom he had loaned everything he had—and it was either take the sheep or lose everything. He wasn’t an experienced sheepman. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come here—where Landy Fargo and his gang control everything. You see, Hugh, they are cattlemen—managers—and they’re part owners, too—for a number of rich men in the East. For years and years they’ve had everything their own way in regard to the range.
“Maybe, if you’re an Eastern man, you don’t understand about range. The Western stock business depends on having acres and acres of open land for the stock to run in through spring, summer, and fall, feeding them just in winter. The land is either privately owned, public domain, school lands or government national forest: in this case it is—except for this big track we have been using—public domain. Of course the sheepmen had just as much right to it as the cattlemen, but because they wanted to keep all the range for themselves, they’ve driven off every man who tried to run sheep in Smoky Land.
“Oh, it was easy to do. Sometimes they did it just by threatening, sometimes by poisoning the stock, and sometimes——”
Hugh leaned forward. “By killing the herders?”
“Yes.” The girl’s lips set tight. “I didn’t know they would go that far, but Fargo’s got a new right-hand man now—a Mexican named José. He’s used to killing—he learned it in the South—and I haven’t a bit of doubt but that he shot Dan last night. Perhaps they’ve killed before, but before it was always open warfare, at least. They’ve always won—and for all I see they’ll win now.
“You see, as far as public domain is concerned, they’ve got a certain right to oppose the sheepmen. They were the first here, and cattle won’t feed after sheep. But in this case there’s a wide track—almost a whole township—through the center of Smoky Land that isn’t public domain but belongs to an old woman down at Boise. It is the best sheep range in the State, and father found out that the cattlemen weren’t renting it. The old woman had tried to rent it to them, but they wouldn’t take it. We found out why, later. They were using it without paying for it—and they thought that giving any money to this helpless old woman was just throwing it away. Incidentally it was all she had, and because there are no mills here, it is practically valueless except for range.
“Father thought that by renting it, the cattlemen would leave him alone. They had all the public domain; and in this way, there couldn’t be any particle of doubt about his being in his rights, both lawfully and from the customs of the range. The rent for it—for a term of years—cost him what little money he had left.