wire fences crisscross and checkerboard all around there up the
river, and they're gittin' to be right troublesome. Of course they're
only a speck up there yet, but they'll multiply like fleas on a hot
dog if we let 'em go ahead. You know how it is."

There was a conclusiveness in Chadron's tone as he said that. It spoke
of a large understanding between men of a kind.

"Sure," grunted the man Mark, nodding his head at the chimney. "You
want a man to work from the willers, without no muss or gun-flashin',
or rough houses or loud talk."

"Twenty of them, their names are here, and some scattered in between
that I haven't put down, to be picked up as they fall in handy, see?"

"And you're aimin' to keep clear, and stand back in the shadder, like
you always have done," growled Mark. "Well, I ain't goin' to ram my
neck into no sheriff's loop for nobody's business but my own from now
on. I'm through with resks, just to be obligin'."

"Who'll put a hand on you in this country unless we give the word?"
Chadron asked, severely.

"How do I know who's runnin' the law in this dang country now? Maybe
you fellers is, maybe you ain't."

"There's no law in this part of the country bigger than the Drovers'
Association," Chadron told him, frowning in rebuke of Mark's doubt of
security. "Well, maybe there's a little sheriff here and there, and a
few judges that we didn't put in, but they're down in the farmin'
country, and they don't cut no figger at all. If you _was_ fool enough
to let one of them fellers git a hold on you we wouldn't leave you in
jail over night. You know how it was up there in the north."

"But I don't know how it is down here." Mark scowled in surly
unbelief, or surly simulation.

"There's not a judge, federal or state, that could carry a bale of hay
anywhere in the cattle country, I tell you, Mark, that we don't draw
the chalk line for."

"Then why don't you do the job yourselves, 'stead of callin' a
peaceable man away from his ranchin'?"

"You're one kind of a gentleman, Mark, and I'm another, and there's
different jobs for different men. That ain't my line."

"Oh hell!" said Mark, laying upon the words an eloquent stress.

"All you've got to do is keep clear of the reservation; don't turn a
card here, no matter how easy it looks. We can't jerk you out of the
hands of the army if you git mixed up with it; that's one place where
we stop. The reservation's a middle ground where we meet the
nesters--rust