Mrs. Spooner, pale and worn from anxiety about her husband, received the news calmly. "I don't think there's anything to worry over," she soothed the girls; "Harvey maybe has some good reason. Remember it's a dry year, and other people may have been annoying him. Anyway, I'm sure he'll not forbid us to water our cattle there. Please put Shasta to the phaeton, Roy, the Babe and I'll drive down and see about it."
The fence was indeed going rapidly up when Mrs. Spooner arrived; Grannis himself was busily directing his men, urging haste in his usual stormy manner.
"Well," he greeted his sister, "have you come to your senses yet--you and those unbroken colts you've got for daughters? You see there's no more water-hole for you to depend on. Cattle'll die, of course. Only thing you can do is to drive 'em over to my ranch and pack up and come along yourselves. If ever a set of young ones need discipline, those two girls do!"
His eyes snapped fiercely--discipline with Harvey Grannis meant punishment.
"Harvey," asked his sister, quietly ignoring his attack on her girls, "aren't you going to give us a key to that gate?"
"Give you a key to the gate? Yes, when you send me word that you're packing to move over to my ranch. I'm doing this for your good. I think you know it, and those stiff-necked young'uns could see it for themselves if you'd brought 'em up right. That's my last word, and I mean it."
Turning on his heel he walked rapidly away, leaving Mrs. Spooner to return to her waiting children.
"Never mind, mother," soothed the Babe, as they drove slowly homeward. "Uncle Harvey's not a bad man--he didn't mean sure-enough that our cattle couldn't drink at the water-hole."
But her mother knew otherwise. Harvey Grannis intended to force them to live with him, for, as has been said, he was really fond of his sister and her children. Since he had come to believe John Spooner dead, the thought that now he would have them all to himself, in his big, comfortable house, grew very pleasant, so that he had determined, in his usual violent fashion, to use force if necessary to accomplish his purpose.
"I'm sure, children, I don't know what we're to do," Mrs. Spooner sighed, as she related the ill success of her errand to the family. "I didn't dream that Harvey could be so hard."