"You take it easy, they'll not leave Ascalon till Sol Drumm, their boss, comes back from Kansas City," the young man said. "We're layin' for him ourselves, we've got a bill against him."
"And we've got about as much show to collect it as we have to dip a hatful of stars out of the river," Stilwell said, turning gloomily from the door.
"We'll see about that!" the younger one returned, in high and defiant stubbornness.
"We've already lost upwards of five hundred head of stock from that feller's trespass on our range," Stilwell explained. "That gang drove in here three weeks ago to rest and feed up for market, payin' no attention to anybody's range or anybody's warning to keep off. They had the men with them to go where they pleased. Them Texas cattle come up here loaded with fever ticks, and the bite of them little bugs means death to a northern herd. They sowed ticks all over my range. I'm still a losin' cattle, and Lord knows where it will stop."
"You've been working to get a quarantine law passed, I remember," Morgan said, feeling this outrage as if the cattle were his own.
"Yes, but Congress is asleep, and them fellers down in Texas never shut their eyes. I warned Drumm to keep off my range, asked him first like a gentleman, but he drove in one night between my pickets and mixed his poison cattle with mine out of pure cussidness. He claimed they got away, and him with fifteen or twenty men to ride herd! It's cost me ten thousand dollars, at the lowest figure, already, and more goin'. It looks like it would clean me out."
"You ought to have some recourse against him in law," Morgan said.
"Yes, I thought so, too. I went to the county attorney and wanted to bring an attachment on Drumm's herd, but he told me there wasn't any law he could act under, it was anybody's range as much as mine, Texas fever or no Texas fever. I could sue him, he said, but it was a slim chance. Well, I'm goin' to see another lawyer—I'll take it up with Judge Thayer, and see what he can do."
"Drumm'll pay it, down to the last dime!" the young man declared.
"We can't hold him up and take it away from him, Fred," the older man reproved. "That would be as big a crime as his."