"Not so strong as I'd like to put it, when I've been told by a buckaroo right in these hills that if I dogged a certain stockman's scrubs off our range I was liable to have all my own cattle disappear; without one chance in a hundred of knowing who'd run them off, too."
"Well. You heard that, did you?" Ludlum spoke in a tone of soft surprise, but his eyes gleamed cruelly. "It's going to be pretty hard for you to make anything on your cattle this year, then, ain't it? Can't even make a payment on your mortgage, mebbe."
"You needn't worry about my not paying you, Mr. Ludlum. If we can't do anything else we can bring the stock inside the fence until yours and these other outsiders' cattle have been rounded up. I'll have enough to sell this fall to pay off something by December. There won't be any danger of losing them next year, when the herd law goes through.
"You tell Joe, here, that you're our best friend, yet you try to set him against us. You tell him the herd law will put an end to the two-mile limit, which isn't so. That's not the kind of friend we're used to, Mr. Ludlum. And if we're not the kind of people you want round here, if you don't like us, why do you come up here? We've got along all right without you."
The moment she said that, she knew that she had made a mistake. Ludlum's eyes narrowed. "Oh," he said slowly, "so you got along all right, did you? Ain't it kind of sudden that you've found that out? Seemed to me you were pretty well pleased to have the old man put up cattle for you on time."
"It was your suggestion that I should buy of you. You weren't doing it because you were a friend. You said it was good business."
"That's right, little lady," Ludlum laughed, "you've hit it. Business it was and business it's to stay. Eh? It'll take more'n losing a bunch of stock to make you knock under, won't it? Well, here's luck to you."
And with a malignant chuckle he kicked spurs into his horse and went up the road at a gallop. As Harry, with throbbing pulse and clenched hands, stared after him she became suddenly aware that Joe Biane was watching her with covert intentness.
"Whatever you do, Joe," she said abruptly, "don't go to outsiders to help you get a start. You see what you're likely to run against."
"Aw! What difference does that make?" Joe mumbled, walking away. "Beat 'em at their own game, I say."