Harry laughed, too. "If this is 'hard pan,' I certainly didn't expect to hit it."
"Yes, sir, and it'll be a heap harder before you've finished provin' up, too. Summer's fine here in the hills, but when the winter sets in! You goin' to stick it out the three years?"
"Oh, no! I'm going back. I haven't taken a homestead myself; this is my brother's. I'm only visiting him."
"What's he goin' to do here, anyhow?"
"Make a ranch, I guess."
"A ranch? Why, it'll take twenty years for him to get the brush off this and get it all into crops. 'Tain't fit for nothin' but grazing. You know what he'd ought to have done? Took forty acres down in the Twin Falls district. There's where they're makin' money. That's the place for you young folks from back East to get in and make a strike. You'd have easy sleddin' all the way, and make money, too. But this here—"
He stopped as if he did not care to say too much, and looked off across the sagebrush.
Harry had listened, interested at first, and then surprised and disturbed. Poor Rob! He did not know what he had got into. And oh, how thankful she was that she, too, had not filed a claim!
At that moment Rob came around the corner of the tent.
"How do!" he said, and stopped.