"Have you heard from any of the boys with the cattle?"
"Yep. Bill Weeks rode down. He said a bunch of I.W.W.'s were campin' above Blue Spring. Thet means they've moved on down to the edge of the timber an' oncomfortable near our wheat. Bill says they're killin' our stock fer meat."
"Hum!… How many in the gang?" inquired Anderson, darkly. His early dealings with outlaw rustlers had not left him favorably inclined toward losing a single steer.
"Wal, I reckon we can't say. Mebbe five hundred, countin' all along the valley on this side. Then we hear there's more on the other… Boss, if they git ugly we're goin' to lose stock, wheat, an' mebbe some blood."
"So many as that!" ejaculated the rancher, in amaze.
"They come an' go, an' lately they're most comin'," replied Jake.
"When do we begin cuttin' grain?"
"I reckon to-morrow. Adams didn't want to start till you got back. It'll be barley an' oats fer a few days, an' then the wheat—if we can git the men."
"An' has Adams hired any?"
"Yes, a matter of twenty or so. They swore they wasn't I.W.W.'s, but Adams says, an' so do I, thet some of them are men who first claimed to our old hands thet they did belong to the I.W.W."