They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the spring rains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe’s broken leg, of the new school district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate was listening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and her father. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heard patiently his justification.
“I didn’t make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. The government establishes forest reserves on the range. No use ramming my head against a stone wall. Uncle Sam is bigger than we are. Your father and his friends got stubborn. I didn’t.”
“No, you were very wise,” she admitted dryly.
“You mean because I adapted myself to the conditions and made the best of them. Why shouldn’t I?” he flushed.
“Father’s cattle had run over that range thirty years almost. What right had you to take it from him?”
“Conditions change. He wouldn’t see it. I did. As for the right of it—well, Luck ain’t king of the valley just because he thinks he is.”
She began to grow angry. A dull flush burned through the tan of her cheeks.
“So you bought sheep and brought them in to ruin the range, knowing that they would cut the feeding ground to pieces, kill the roots of vegetation with their sharp hoofs, and finally fill the country with little gullies to carry off the water that ought to sink into the ground.”
“Sheep ain’t so bad if they are run right.”
“It depends where they run. This is no place for them.”