Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.
So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.
“Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?” she asked, intensely interested in Soapy’s tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got to mix than oil and water.
For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with what seemed elaborate carelessness:
“Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more’n fifteen or twenty miles from your place.”
“And you say they are spoiling the range?”
“They’re ce’tainly spoiling it for cows.”
“But can’t something be done? If my cows were there first I don’t see what right he has to bring his sheep there,” the girl frowned.
The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised at the stillness, looked round. “Well?”
“Now you’re shouting, ma’am! That’s what we say,” enthused Texas, spurring to the rescue.