"It's just his fresh way of talking," Rob said at noon, when she had described the incident to him. "He may think you expect a reward from Ludlum for feeding it. It may be ours, of course, though I don't see where the cow can be. We'll have to wait until to-night when the milk cows come in to see if any of them claim this one. It looks too poor to be ours, I think. Any time Ludlum's riders come looking for strays, we can show them these two and let them decide."
"Don't you think we should round our critters up and count them?" Harry suggested. "It's a long time since we've been over the yearlings and steers, and we may be losing more of them. Those two haven't turned up yet."
"I know," said Rob, with a sigh. "I've been meaning to; but there's so everlasting much to do. I ought to be working on that fill for the reservoir right now. And yet, if we want the wheat to make anything, I've got to get more water on it before it's too late. We want to save every bit of feed inside, too, so we can't bring all the stock in until they've cleaned up the range. Once haying's over, you bet I'm going to dog off Ludlum's scrubs and give our cattle a fair chance at the range. It's a little too much to have him grab everything outside and hold a mortgage on our land, too."
As Rob, sitting flat on the porch, with his back against the house and his feet out before him, talked of his plans, Harry suddenly noticed two men who were riding toward the gate.
"Now what can they want?" she said as they came inside. "I haven't a thing left to offer them for dinner."
"They're not coming to the house," Rob said. "They're going west. Riders hunting strays, I guess." They watched in silence as the two men rode slowly through the herd, taking note of the cows and calves there; then the riders disappeared round the butte.
"They'll probably go up on top and look through the cattle there and then drop in to supper," Rob suggested as he got up to go to work.
But they did not come. It was not until the Fourth of July that the men appeared again, and then they came on an unexpected errand.