THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM
Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.
Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.
Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them 62 pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.
The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.
“I reckon I’ll play Mr. Morse’s own game and see how he likes it,” the angry cattleman told his friends.
But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.
Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.
“Dad gum it, I was aimin’ to do that assessment 63 work and couldn’t jest lay my hands on the time. I’d been a millionaire three years and didn’t know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me’ll have a settlement. If the law don’t right me, I reckon I’m most man enough to ’tend to Mr. Morse.”
It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet.