"Guess I'd better lend a hand," Rob said to himself. He had been repairing an irrigation ditch on the west side of the ranch and for some time had been watching a cloud of dust to the east; it seemed to indicate fresh trouble from Ludlum's hungry horde.
Although scarcely ten days had passed since those scrub cattle had appeared in the hills, the famished animals had already broken fences, trampled growing wheat, horned last season's stacks and broken down banks of the irrigation ditches. And what was worse, if possible, than all that mischief, they were taking a great deal of Rob's time, every moment of which was worth money.
"We're helpless to prevent it, too, I guess!" Rob muttered as he started toward the scene of trouble; "helpless because there's no herd law in these hills. Ludlum's got just as good right to the free range as we have, and, with his mortgage on Harry's land, he can make it mighty bad for us if he finds us dogging his stock off. I'll get even with him for his meanness, though."
He glowered at the scattered bands of cattle that trailed along the fence, seeking an opening into the rich feed inside. How shortsighted he and the other foothill ranchers were not to have demanded a herd law long before!
As the law stood now the "cattle baron" had the advantage. He could run his hundreds of head of stock on the open range from April to September, or take them up into the reserve until that was eaten clean; then after shipping his beef "critters" he could drive the rest down on the South Side to winter on the hay that he had bought from the farmers there. The man with fifty or a hundred head had no chance at all against him. If the big stockman's cattle, grazing unherded, got inside the rancher's fence and bloated on his alfalfa or grain, the stockman could collect heavy damages from the farmer, who had no redress for his damaged crops; it was the farmer's business to keep the stockman's cattle out.
It was a just law for the wilderness, but not at all the law for a region that was going under the fence. The men who were reclaiming the desert, who were turning the north slope of the foothills and the prairie into farms, who were raising grain and hay and building up small herds of cattle and sheep, were now the men to be protected by law. That protection a herd law would give them, for it would forbid stockmen to run their herds into the hills without riders to watch them, and it would make the stockmen liable for damages to fences or crops. That would mean, of course, that the big herds would not be turned into the hills at all; for it was only because they could be left there without herders that they had piled up the profits for their owners.
"Pity sis couldn't have known what Ludlum was planning to do up here himself," Rob went on to himself. "She mightn't have fallen for the old lady's get-rich-easy talk. Not that Mrs. Ludlum meant to gouge Harry. She's square, and thinks he is, too, I guess. Ludlum's sharp, that's all. Drives a hard bargain. If we'd known how many of their scrubs we were going to ride after and feed for nothing, Harry'd have been satisfied with thirty of her own, all right, especially now that the range is going dry."
As he stumbled along under the hot sun he saw Harry coming on horseback. In her khaki jumper, divided skirt and riding boots she looked like a boy of sixteen.
"I'm awfully sorry to ask you to help," she began. "I can't get those critters of Ludlum's out unless ours go, too. My! But I hate them!" She stopped abruptly, with a telltale quiver in her voice, and looked away. Then quickly she braced herself. "If I could once get them outside, I'd take 'em so far they'd never find themselves, let alone find the road back here."