"One of Menocal's herders mixed his flock with my six hundred, did it deliberately, I'm convinced; there were three thousand head of his. Billy was tending ours—and Billy is only fourteen, you know. I had come down here for some supplies and when I returned, I found him crying. The Mexican had separated the sheep and we were a hundred short, gone with his, and he would pay no attention to Billy, swearing he had only his own band. And he drove them away. I went to Menocal, who was very polite, but he said I must be mistaken as his herders were all honest men; and I've not got my sheep back, and I'm not likely to. For that band is now thirty miles away somewhere. No use to go to court—Menocal owns everything and everybody around here. So I'm quitting."
"The sheep business isn't all roses, that's certain," Lee Bryant remarked. "It's hard luck that your band ran down just when the price of mutton and wool is going up. So you're letting the ranch slide?"
"Yes, I can't pay the mortgage; Menocal would foreclose at once if I tried to stay. Last time I was in town he asked me about paying it off and when I told him I shouldn't be able to do that, he said he'd have me deed it back to him to save foreclosure proceedings. And he was smiling, too. He knew all the time that he'd get the ranch back; and when he does, he'll sell it to some other sucker."
"Both of us have wished a hundred times that we'd never sold our Illinois farm to come here," Mrs. Stevenson said, plaintively. "I don't know what we'll do when we go back, for that matter. Just rent a place, I guess. Land is so high-priced there that we'll never be able to buy a farm again."
"Renting there is better than starving here," her husband declared. "We'll have a better home, too. When we first came to this place, we planned on building a fine house, but I never had the money loose, and we've just kept on from year to year living in this 'dobe hole. Good thing I didn't have the money, however, for we'd lose the house along with the ranch if we had built. Well, we're going back East, anyhow, as soon as I sell the sheep. Graham, who has the big ranch on Diamond Creek, south of where those girls are homesteading, is coming up in a day or two to look at them, maybe buy them. You can see Graham's big white house from the Kennard trail."
Bryant nodded. "I know the place, saw it when passing," said he. Then he went on, "When I was at the ford watering my horse before coming here, an auto crossed the creek. In the rear seat were a fat Mexican, whom I took to be Menocal, and a white man with a pointed beard. The latter perhaps was Graham?"
"Yes, that must have been him. Which way were they driving?"
"South."
"Going to the Graham ranch, I s'pose."
"There was a slim young fellow driving the car—some Mexican blood in him," Lee stated.