"If he had, we'll get it. And we can sleep good of nights!"
"You're a fool, Clen, with your 'sleep good of nights!' I sleep good of nights, and I've—" he halted abruptly, and when he spoke again his words grated harsh. "I tell you this is a fang and claw existence—all life is fang and claw. The strong rip the flesh from the bones of the weak. And the rich rip their wealth from the clutch of a thousand poor. What a man has is his only so long as he can hold it. One man's gain is another man's loss, and that is life. And it makes no difference in the end whether it was got at the point of the pistol in defiance of law, or whether it was got within the law under the guise of business. And I don't need you to preach to me about what is wrong, either."
The Englishman laughed. "I'm not preaching, Monk. Anyone engaged in the business we're in has got no call to preach."
"We're no worse than most of the preachers. They peddle out, for money, what they don't believe."
"Heigh-ho! What a good old world you've painted it! I hope you're right, and I'm not as bad as I think I am."
Bethune interrupted, speaking rapidly in the outlining of a plan of procedure, and it was well toward the middle of the afternoon when the two saddled up and struck off into the hills in the direction of their camp.
Twilight had deepened to dusk as Patty Sinclair pulled her team to a standstill upon the rim of the bench and looked down upon the twinkling lights of the little town that straggled uncertainly along the sandy bank of the shallow river.
"Hain't it grand lookin'?" breathed Microby Dandeline who sat decorously booted and stockinged upon the very edge of the board seat. "You wouldn't think they wus so many folks, less'n you seen 'em yers'f. Wisht I lived to town, an' I wisht they'd be a circust."
Patty guided the horses down the trail that slanted into the valley and crossed the half-mile of "flats" whose wire fences and long, clean-cut irrigation ditches marked the passing of the cattle country. A billion mosquitoes filled the air with an unceasing low-pitched drone, and settled upon the horses in a close-fitting blanket of gray. The girls tried to fight off the stinging pests that attacked their faces and necks in whirring clouds. But they fought in vain and in vain they endeavored to urge the horses to a quickening of their pace, for impervious alike to the sting of the insects and the blows of the whip, the animals plodded along in the unvarying walk they had maintained since early morning.