"Looks to me like we was at our row's end," remarked Jonah Bean with gloomy philosophy. "If they's a turnin' p'int I hain't seed it. Might's well sell out, Mis' Spooner, if you kin find a buyer for the bunch."
"No, no, Jonah," objected Elizabeth eagerly. "We'll find a way. Can't you think of something, Roy?" she asked.
Roy's face was sober; he and Jonah had discussed the question, and neither one could see any other way than to sell the herd before they perished of drouth.
"Nothing except sell," he said, shaking his head soberly.
"Then I'll find a way!" declared Elizabeth, passionately. "They shan't be sold--and they shan't starve, either. You and Jonah round up the bunch and Ruth and I will haul water from Munson's pond--it never dries up, and I know Mr. Munson won't care."
"O, that will be the very thing! Mother, please let us," begged Ruth, eager to help.
Really there seemed nothing else to do. Elizabeth's plan though it meant hard work, was at least feasible--for a time, at least; in the meantime something unforseen might turn up.
So, with a big hogshead in the ranch wagon they drove five miles to get water, which their neighbor Mr. Munson kindly let them have.
"I always knew Harvey was a cross-grained old sinner," frankly declared Mr. Munson. "Wants to starve you out, I hear, so's he c'n make you all live with him. Well, I don't think much of his plan. But you're plumb welcome to water--long's you hold out to haul it."
For three days they hauled water, staying but not satisfying the famishing cattle's thirst; and on one pretext or another Grannis kept his men in the water-hole pasture. The morning of the third day Ruth came upon Elizabeth with the wire clippers in her hand and a very queer look upon her face--a look that caused an awful thought to flash into the younger sister's mind. Could she--could Elizabeth be the wire-clipper that Harvey Grannis was waiting to catch--and jail? The thing was impossible, she argued fiercely; Elizabeth simply couldn't do such a thing!