“You bet he has. Young Will Whittaker is mighty near as good a shot as Emerson is. He does most of the managing at their ranch headquarters, while the old man works politics over in Plumas.”
“Have they had any fights yet?”
“I haven’t seen Emerson for a month. He was over in Plumas then and he said he expected to have trouble and wanted me to come out.”
“You don’t mean to say that the Fillmore outfit is really tryin’ to drive Emerson and the rest of them out of the Fernandez mountains?”
“Well, they want to get control of the whole range for about a hundred miles, if they can. And there’s some politics mixed up in it, of course. Old Whittaker is a Republican, you know, with a lot of political schemes he wants to put through. Of course Emerson and the others are Democrats and stand in with the party, and the Colonel thinks he’ll be doing the Republicans a big service if he can break them up. Emerson expected the trouble to come to a head over the spring round-up, for Colonel Whittaker said that Emerson and McAlvin and the rest of them shouldn’t round-up with him.”
“Well, Emerson won’t stand any such nonsense as that!”
“I guess Whittaker and his cow-boys will have to flirt gravel mighty fast if they keep him from it!”