"Don't say it cross--just say it."
"But, Uncle Harvey, even if the spring does give out we always water at the big water-hole. Nobody ever did know it to give out, did they?"
"No," said Harvey Grannis, "that's why I bought the land it's on."
"And you'd always let us water at the big tank," concluded the Babe, comfortably.
"I would if 'twas only you, honey," he told her, and his eyes glittered.
He had said that he bought the land for that water-tank, and he might have added: "That's why I wouldn't sell it to your father when he wanted to buy it with Silver Spur." He might have said this, for the Silver Spur joined his big pastures, had once, in fact, been part of his holding, and when John Spooner bought from his brother-in-law, Grannis retained the pasture containing the tank, saying that he wanted to use it for convenience in watering herds when he drove them down to the railroad for shipping, and that the Spooners could always use it anyhow. This was a mere verbal arrangement, it did not stand in the deed, and when the Babe arrived with her little speech and repeated it at the dinner-table there was consternation.
"What on earth can Uncle Harvey mean?" asked Ruth indignantly. "Do you suppose he thinks the use of that tank could be taken away from us?"
"I don't think he could really be as mean as that, Ruth," reassured Elizabeth. "He's just trying to worry us because of the way we spoke. The tank is on his own land, you know."
But that the threat was real was proven later, when Roy announced that Grannis had come with a wagon and men from his ranch, and was busy running a wire-fence around the water-hole. They were putting up a locked gate, so that only by permission could anybody have access to it.
"And the big spring's just mud," said Roy, gloomily. "I think Harvey Grannis is the meanest man in Texas!"