handled it warily, like a loaded gun.

Chadron had sent his cowboys up the river when Macdonald first came,
and tried to "throw a holy scare into him," as he put it. The old
formula did not work in the case of the lean, long-jawed, bony-chinned
man. He was polite, but obdurate, and his quick gray eyes seemed to
read to their inner process of bluff and bluster as through tissue
paper before a lamp. When they had tried to flash their guns on him,
the climax of their play, he had beaten them to it. Two of them were
carried back to the big ranchhouse in blankets, with bullets through
their fleshy parts--not fatal wounds, but effective.

The problem of a fighting "nester" was a new one to the cattlemen of
that country. For twenty years they had kept that state under the
dominion of the steer, and held its rich agricultural and mineral
lands undeveloped. The herbage there, curing in the dry suns of summer
as it stood on the upland plains, provided winter forage for their
herds. There was no need for man to put his hand to the soil and
debase himself to a peasant's level when he might live in a king's
estate by roaming his herds over the untamed land.

Homesteaders who did not know the conditions drifted there on the
westward-mounting wave, only to be hustled rudely away, or to pay the
penalty of refusal with their lives. Reasons were not given, rights
were not pleaded by the lords of many herds. They had the might to
work their will; that was enough.

So it could be understood what indignation mounted in the breast of
tough old Saul Chadron when a pigmy homesteader put his firm feet down
on the ground and refused to move along at his command, and even
fought back to maintain what he claimed to be his rights. It was an
unprecedented stand, a dangerous example. But this nester had held out
for more than two years against his forces, armed by some invisible
strength, it seemed, guarded against ambuscades and surprises by some
cunning sense which led him whole and secure about his nefarious
ways.

Not alone that, but other homesteaders had come and settled near him
across the river on two other big ranches which cornered there against
Chadron's own. These nesters drew courage from Macdonald's example,
and cunning from his counsel, and stood against the warnings,
persecutions, and attempts at forceful dislodgment. The law of might
did not seem to apply to them, and there was no other source equal to
the dignity of the Drover