"Then it's war!" she said. "And you'll go under yourself, from your own size, if you haven't the judgment to hedge yourself now like the rest. The Three Bar is going ahead—and we're going to win."
She turned her horse but Slade caught her arm and whirled her around. He jerked a thumb at the two men down the ridge.
"What can Deane, a half-baked boy, give you?" he demanded. "Money—and trinkets to hang all over you till you flash like a Mexican's bridle; a flower garden and a soft front lawn to range in—and after a year or two you'd give your soul to trade it off for an acre of raw sage. You'd trade a castle full of glittering chandeliers for one hour at the round-up fire—your box at the opera for a seat on the ground with your back against the chuck-wagon wheel while the boys sang just one old song. I know! You'd soon get fed up on too much of that. You want an outfit of your own. I'll give you that—the biggest in the State."
She shook her head without answering.
"Then I'll break you," he predicted a second time. He drew a folded slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "That's the exchange slip," he said. "It calls for three hundred odd head of mixed stuff. You can send yours over any time." He turned his horse and followed after the ranger while the girl joined Harris and Deane.
Harris had slipped the strap of his glasses and handed them to Deane who had dismounted and was peering off at the spot Harris had pointed out. A few scattered shacks, showing as toy houses from the distance, stood in the center of a broad open basin, sheltered on all sides by the choppy mass of the Breaks. A solid corral, almost a stockade, stood near the buildings and a few white points indicated that a teepee or two had been pitched along its edge.
"That's Arnold's stockade," Harris explained to Deane. "Arnold was an old-time rustler that finished at the end of a rope fifteen years ago. Now all the drifters in the country stop over here if they want a place to hole up."
Deane had been striving to fathom the attitude of a community where the thieves were known as such, their headquarters a matter of common knowledge, and yet allowed to carry on their trade.
"Can't the sheriff clean them out of there?" he asked.
"He could," Harris said. "But no man will make a complaint. They can rustle every steer in the country and the losers are afraid to make a report. Every outfit is supposed to protect its own. If Alden should ride up to almost any ranch within a hundred miles and ask them if they'd missed any stock in the last three years they'd shake their heads and swear that they hadn't lost a hoof. But the Three Bar has a clean page; we're not afraid he'll get a line on us while we're having him round up some one else. The first time we get a scrap of real evidence on any man we'll call Alden in."