"Of course. I can see that," Harry answered quickly, "and I expect to pay you; but I haven't a cent of money now, as you know. I shall sell some steers in the fall, anyhow, and I can pay you then."
"I'd rather you paid me in cattle. After I've hired out harvesting, I ought to have enough cash to buy all the winter hay I'll need for my own stock, and maybe some for yours. I'll go to town to-morrow for that wire. Maybe I can get it on time. That'll give me a little more cash to buy hay with."
Harry wondered what she should do if the scrubs broke in while he was away. While Mrs. Ludlum had been talking, Harry had been ready to believe that she could do anything; now the time had come for her to show what she was actually good for.
As soon as Rob had left the next morning, therefore, she made a circuit outside the fence and ran off all the cattle in sight. To her relief, that kept them away until the afternoon feeding began; then, making a second tour, she dispersed the lines that were headed for the alfalfa.
"If I'd dogged them that way from the first," she thought, "they'd never have got inside at all."
Rob did not get home that night, rather to Harry's satisfaction. "It gives me another day to see what I can do with these critters."
Dawn comes early in the foothills at the end of June. Long before four o'clock the sky was pink, the grouse were whistling in the alfalfa, the morning breeze had begun to flutter the quaking asps, a cool, fresh smell of juicy grass had risen from the earth, and the world of animals had begun to feed.
The cattle were the first to move. Almost before dawn they leave their bedding ground and follow the scent of the nearest pasture. For Ludlum's stock Rob's wheat and alfalfa were the lure.
As they snuffed the sweetness of growing grass, the leaders of the herd broke into hungry bawling, set off at a gallop, and, as they reached the fence, plunged at it and went over.