From the cook-shack door the girl viewed these preparations, then turned her eyes to the flat and visioned it with a carpet of rippling hay.
There was a clatter of hoofs and a rattling of gravel as five horsemen put their sure-footed mounts down the steep slope two hundred yards back of the house and followed along the fence of the corral. The five Brandons had cut across the shoulder of the mountain. The girl wondered at this visit as she heard Lafe Brandon, the father and head of the tribe, ask Harris to put them up for the night.
An hour later Harris and Lafe came to her door and she let them in.
"The Brandons are riding down to file on a quarter apiece," Harris said. "Art quit the wagon below their place as we came in and told the rest that we're going to farm the Three Bar."
"Then you're doing the same?" she asked Lafe with sudden hope that her brand would have company in the move.
Old man Brandon shook his head.
"Not right off," he said. "Until we see how you folks pan out. We can't fix to handle it the way you do. We're filing to protect ourselves before some nester outfit turns up at our front door."
The old man explained his views. There was enough flow in the stream that cut their home valley to water something over a section of land. With that filed on they would control their home range. They could grade up their cows and increase a hundred per cent. with a section under hay. He hoped the Three Bar would win, but he feared to start in the face of the wave of opposition he was sure would rise against the move.
"We're not fixed for it," he explained again.
"But the other small outfits feel the same way," Harris said. "If two of us start the rest will join in."