Anything done upon them was of import, irrevocable.
Thus had Jim Last inscribed the semi-yearly letters that went down the Wall with the cattle, or for supplies.
Now she spread a shining pad under the light, sat down in her father’s chair and began, carefully and minutely to reproduce the badge that meant authority of a sort, yet was not a sheriff’s star.
The riders, clustered at her shoulder, watched the thing take shape and form. At the end of twenty painstaking minutes Tharon straightened and looked up in the interested faces.
“There,” she said, “an’ its dull copper colour!”
And this was the shield with its unknown heraldry which Conford took up and studied carefully for a long time. 97
“‘Forest Service,’” he read aloud, “‘Department of Agriculture.’ Well, so far as I can see, it ain’t so terrifyin’. That last means raisin’ things, like beets an’ turnips an’ so on, an’ as for th’ forest part, why, if he stays up in his ‘fringe o’ pines’ I guess we ain’t got no call to kick. Don’t you worry, Tharon, about this new bird.”
“I’m a darned sight more worried about that other one, th’ Arizona beauty which Courtrey’s got in.”