"No one else has done any beefing," Deane said. "So why should I?"
"This is everyday business with us," Harris pointed out. "And right unusual for you. There's likely a number of things you do every day back your way, but that doesn't signify that I could amble back there and perform as well as you."
"I suspect you'd make out all right," Deane said. "Anyway—I'm much obliged for the endorsement."
They camped again in the drizzle but by noon of the following day the sun peeped through. In an hour every cloud and fog-bank had been dispersed with a rapidity which is seen only in the hill country. The ranger pulled up his horse as they struck a game trail in the saddle of a low divide. A bunch of shod horses had been over it a few hours past.
"Some of the albino's layout," Wilton surmised. "They cross through here to that camp of theirs down in the Breaks. I've run across their trails up here before."
They rode out on to a spur and looked down on the low country. Slade and the ranger were going on, the others returning to the Three Bar. Harris pointed to the country spread out below them.
"That's the Breaks," he told Deane. "I'll point out the albino's stronghold."
"While they're looking I want to talk to you," Slade said to Billie.
"Let's get together," he said, when the others had passed on. "Why are you so dead set on making a squatter outfit of the Three Bar? Don't you know the nesters will flock in here and cut the range all up as soon as they see a chance?"
"Not my range," she said. "Outside of the V L and the Halfmoon D there's not another site they can get water for, except maybe a couple of spring gulches where flood reservoirs will hold back enough to water a forty. So we'll still control our home range."