“Speak up, speak up!” he commanded testily, as Justin hesitated. “For myself I want to know just what to expect. Are you with us, or against us? You can’t be both.”
Justin did not want to speak up, for he did not want to break with Philip Davison. He still held for him much of the strong admiration he had cherished in his youth.
“Having been elected without my knowledge or wish, I shall go to Denver untrammeled,” he said, still hesitating. “How I shall vote will depend upon the questions that come up for settlement.”
“That’s a fool’s answer,” Davison declared. “Are you against the range, or are you for it? Will you support the interests of the cattlemen, or the interests of the farmers?”
His words flushed his face still more and made his eyes very bright. There were fleshy pads under those blue eyes, and the cheeks below the pads looked flabby. Justin thought of Ben. In some respects the father and the son were alike. Yet Ben was smaller, had a weak face, and little of the towering bulk of his father, who was as tall as Justin himself. And thoughts of Ben, humiliated by defeat, of Lucy, together with the old regard, made him oblivious to the harsh words and harsher tones. Yet evasion was not possible.
“I don’t think I ought to be called on to declare myself before I know just what the issues are and in what shape they will be presented,” he urged. “But you know my sentiments, Mr. Davison. You know I quit the ranch not because I did not wish to work for you, but simply because I——”
“Because you were a fool; because the work of branding a bawling calf made you sick at the stomach; because you couldn’t stand it to see a starving cow wandering about in a blizzard with nothing to eat! You think—”
“Mr. Davison—”
“You think the cattle business is cruel and brutal, and—”
“I think cattle raising as it is conducted on the open range is cruel. I can’t help that.”