"It's pure design," he stated. "His boys are busy shoving his cows from the middle all ways so that when fall comes he has a good inside block that's only been lightly fed over. They fall back on that for winter feed. Last winter, when cows were dying like rats, his men were out drifting Slade's stuff back toward his middle range."
"That's true enough," she admitted. "But——"
"But you thought he was doing it as a favor to you—getting his surplus off your territory so your own cows would have a better chance. That's the same kind of talk he floated all round the line; playing the benevolent neighbor when in reality the old pirate had deliberately planned, year after year, to overcrowd your range and feed you out."
"But his men would know," she objected.
"Not many of them would grasp the whole scheme of it," he said. "You hadn't thought of it yourself. He'd detail a pair of boys to shove a few hundred head way off to the south. A few days later another couple would be throwing a bunch off northeast. See? And what if a few of them did surmise? They're riding for his brand."
The girl nodded. That unalterable code again,—the religion of being loyal to one's brand. Not one of Slade's men would balk at doing it knowingly; each would do anything to advance his interests as long as he drew his pay from Slade.
"I doubt if there's a dozen men within two hundred miles that haven't lifted a few calves now and then for the brand they were riding for. That's the way it goes. A rule that was fine to start—loyalty to the hand that paid you; then carried too far until it's degenerated into a tool that's often abused," he said.
As they talked Harris detailed men for each draw but when they reached the point where they were due to drop down and cross the valley he pulled up his horse.
"You take the rest of the circle, Carp," he instructed Carpenter. "I'm going to ride off up the ridge a piece." The girl regarded him curiously. No less than three times in the last week he had stopped midway of the circle and asked her to complete it. Now he had turned it over to Carp and he signaled her to remain with him.
"Where are we going?" she asked as she watched the men ride down toward the bottoms. "And why?"