Peter Morgan did not own all that range, but he surely did control it, until one day ‘Spike’ Cahill, one of the 6X6 punchers, rode in at the home ranch and announced that a nester family had moved in at the old ranch-house between Coyote Cañon and Antelope Creek.
‘They’ve got a few head of stock, couple of wagons, and the gall of a sidewinder,’ declared Spike.
‘Did you tell ’em to keep movin’?’ demanded Morgan hotly.
‘I shore did!’
‘What did they say?’
‘The old man said f’r me to git to hell away from there, before he blowed me back a few ginerations. What in hell is a gineration, Pete?’
‘Probably some kind of a damn gun,’ said Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs, the cook of the 6X6, whose opinion usually settled all arguments, as far as Briggs was concerned.
At any rate, Peter Morgan went down to see this nester, whose name happened to be Paul Lane, and was promptly told that he fully intended staying just where he was, and that if any pestiferous cowpunchers started trouble with him, he’d make ’em wish they were on a dairy, where they belonged.
It rather amused Peter Morgan, in a way, whose word had almost been law in that part of the country—the law of might. He noticed that this nester had a son and a daughter. The girl was possibly eighteen years of age, while the boy was a long, gangling youth, possibly twenty-five, with a devil-may-care air, which irritated Peter Morgan. The girl was tall and slender, and Peter Morgan thought she was rather pretty, although he knew more about cattle and horses and cards than he did of women.
But he was there for a purpose, and he told Paul Lane, in no uncertain terms, that he was an interloper, and that nesters were very unwelcome in any part of that range.