"Hay is now feefteen and——"
"Sure. And may go to fifteen hundred, so I wouldn't think of robbing you. No doubt you can get fifty from some one you don't want to keep friendly with."
"You ar-re mistaken. I rather not to quarrel wit' nobody."
"The hill ranchers may not understand," Rob said as he turned his horse. "Trying to keep in with us and our enemy, too, doesn't look so friendly as you imagine."
As he and Harry, riding home, talked over the visit, Rob said, "There must be something more than sweet neutrality back of all that. How do we know that Ludlum isn't paying that fellow to stand out against the herd law?"
"He can't bribe every one," Harry answered, "and there are enough of us to carry it through, once we all get together."
The evidence that Rob was able to give of Ludlum's dishonesty, and of his outspoken animosity toward Harry and himself, was a strong argument with those farmers who had listened favorably to Ludlum's talk. Rob was able to convince them that unless they wished to be ruined they must protect themselves against such plunderers as Ludlum. The more progressive farmers added their arguments to Rob's with such effect that, when the petition for a herd law came up in the county court, very few among the hill ranchers' names were missing.
"There she is," Rob said, throwing on the table the Camas Prairie Courier, containing the announcement that their district was to go under the herd law. "I'd like to see old Ludlum's mug when he reads that. I bet he'll try to start something even now."
"Let him," Harry answered tranquilly. "This will see his finish up here."
"It may see our finish, too, round December first," Rob said to himself, "that is, if hay goes any higher and cattle any lower."