“No, they never shoot anybody but a rustler, the 49 way the world hears of it,” said he, in resentment. “But they’ll hear another story on the outside one of these days. I’m in this fight up to the eyes to break the back of this infernal combination that’s choking this state to death. It’s the first time in my life that I ever laid my hand to anything for anybody but myself, and I’m going to see it through to daylight.”
“But there must be millions behind the cattlemen, Mr. Macdonald.”
“There are. It seems just about hopeless that a handful of ragged homesteaders ever can make a stand against them. But they’re usurping the public domain, and they’ll overreach themselves one of these days. Chadron has title to this homestead, but that’s every inch of land that he’s got a legal right over. In spite of that, he lays the claim of ownership to the land fifteen miles north of here, where I’ve nested. He’s been telling me for more than two years that I must clear out.”
“You could give it up, and go back to your work among men, where it would count,” she said.
“There are things here that count. I couldn’t put a state on the map—an industrial and progressive one, I mean—back home in Washington, or sitting with my feet on the desk in some sleepy consulate. And I’m going to put this state on the map where it belongs. That’s the job that’s cut out for me here, Miss Landcraft.”
He said it without boast, but with such a stubborn 50 note of determination that she felt something lift within her, raising her to the plane of his aspirations. She knew that Alan Macdonald was right about it, although the thing that he would do was still dim in her perception.
“Even then, I don’t see what a ranch away off up here from anywhere ever will be worth to you, especially when the post is abandoned. You know the department is going to give it up?”
“And then you—” he began in consternation, checking himself to add, slowly, “no, I didn’t know that.”
“Perhaps in a year.”
“It can’t make much difference in the value of land up this valley, though,” he mused. “When the railroad comes on through—and that will be as soon as we break the strangle hold of Chadron and men like him—this country will develop overnight. There’s petroleum under the land up where I am, lying shallow, too. That will be worth something then.”