“I’m not an old maid!” Pearl asserted with spirit.
“No; I happened along!”
Before Mr. and Mrs. Harkness departed that evening, Dicky Carroll, galloping by, stopped for a few moments.
“I’ve got a job over at Borden’s,” he announced to Harkness. “He’ll be a better man to git along with than Davison, anyway; so I’m kinder glad to go. And if I stay round hyer longer I’ll be tempted to shoot Ben full of handsome little holes; he’s been meaner than a polecat to me ever sense that election.”
Then he shook hands with Justin and Clayton, who had come out into the yard. The moonlight revealed him in full cowboy attire, with his rope coiled at the saddle bow.
“They’re sayin’, Justin, that you helped to bu’st the cattle bizness round hyer. I ain’t believin’ it; but if you did, what’s the dif? There’ll be plenty of ranches fer as long a time as I’m able to straddle a pony and sling a rope, ranches back where the farmers can’t go. When I can’t ride a horse any longer I’ll quit cow-punchin’ and go to playin’ gentleman like Ben. From the fine clothes he wears I judge there’s money in it. Well, so long; luck to all of you!”
Fogg did not vary from his custom, when he visited Paradise Valley. He came over to Clayton’s, and sat in the little study, in the chair he loved, which, though big, was now almost too small for him. He put his fat hands on the arms of the chair, stretched out his fat legs, and with his watch chain shining like a golden snake across his big stomach, talked as amiably and laughed as loudly as ever.
Lemuel Fogg believed that it is better to bend before the storm than to be broken by it. The government at Washington had heard from the farming settlers and irrigationists of the West. Many states had spoken that winter, and their voice had been as one. The agricultural element, feeble and scorned at first, was becoming a power. Congress, heeding its voice, was beginning to devise ways and means by which vast areas of public land hitherto thought fit only for grazing, if for that, could be watered by irrigation. Even the East, long hostile because it did not want more rich Western lands opened to compete with Eastern agriculture, held modified opinions. The order of the land department for the removal of the illegal fences on the public domain was to be enforced, and the fences had begun to come down. Seeing the hand of fate, Fogg and Davison had sold some of their cattle, were contracting their grazing area, and had begun to take thought of other things.
“We’ll go with the tide,” said Fogg, whom Davison followed in most things pertaining to matters of business, for Fogg’s success had been phenomenal. “What do we care whether it’s cattle or something else, if we can get money out of it? Never buck against the government; it’s too strong, and you’ll get into trouble. We’ll turn farmer; we’ll irrigate.”
So Fogg and Davison were increasing their already considerable holdings of land in Paradise Valley, by purchases from settlers and from the mortgage companies. It was reported that in some places ranchmen secured land by inducing their cowboys to settle on quarter-sections and so obtain title from the government. Fogg and Davison would not do that. Not because they were too scrupulous, but because they were too wise. It would be an unpleasant thing to be haled into court for land swindling by the government agents who were ordering down the fences.