"Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade could come into this country twelve years back, with nothing but a long rope and a running iron, and be owning thirty thousand head to-day?"
"He has the knack to protect his own and increase," she said. "They're afraid of Slade."
Harris absently traced the Three Bar in the dust with a stick, then fashioned the V L and the Halfmoon D, the three brands that ranged along the foot of the hills. With a few deft strokes he transformed the Three Bar into the Three Cross T, reworked the V L into a Diamond Box and the Halfmoon D into Circle P, each one of the worked-overs representing one of the dozen or so brands registered by Slade. He blotted out his handiwork with the flat of his hand.
"Don't you suppose that the owner of every one of those brands knows that?" she scoffed. "A clumsy rebrand would loom up for a mile. Slade's no fool."
"Not in a thousand years," Harris agreed. "I was just commenting on how peculiar it was that the three brands he runs farthest north should be so easy worked over into any one of the three that his range overlaps up this way. And I happen to know his farthest south brands would work out the same way with the outfits at the other end of his range. But he earmarks all of his brands the same—with jinglebobs; and jinglebobs most generally drop off and leave nothing but a good big piece absent out of the ear."
"So you think a man as big as Slade is stupid enough to try his hand at brand-blotting on all sides at once?" she asked.
"No; nor even once on one side," he returned. "Not him. The one fact that the similarity of brands would make it easy to fall into the habit is enough to keep every outfit watching him. He couldn't start—and knows it."
"Then what does it all amount to?" she asked.
"While folks watch him on that score he could work in a dozen ways that don't concern those brands at all," he said.
The girl shook her head impatiently and looked across at the six men who ate her fare.