tter can drop in
at Slade's and get five hundred dollars in cash. The wild bunch will
handle every case that turns up if that rumor is true."

"The sheriff has never been able to pick up a single one of the men who
have burned those squatters out," she said.

"And he never will without some help," Harris agreed. "Alden's hands
are tied. He's only an ornament right now and folks have come to
believe he's real harmless. But Alden is playing his own game
single-handed the best he can. One day he'll get his hooks into some
of these torch-bearers so deep they'll never shake them out. The
homestead laws can't be defied indefinitely. The government will take
a hand and send marshals in here thicker than flies. Then the outfits
that have hedged themselves in advance are on top. The rest are
through."

"But what can the Three Bar do against Slade until those marshals
come?" she asked.

"There's a difference between sacking an established outfit with a big
force of hands and burning out some isolated squatter roosting in a
wagon," Harris said. "I've filed on water out of the Crazy Loop to
cover the section I bought in the flats. We can pick men and give them
a job with the Three Bar between spells of doing prove-up work. We can
put in a company ditch to cover all the filings, pay them for working
on it and charge their pro-rata share of improvements up against each
man's final settlement. When they've made final proof we can buy out
those who want to sell."

"The cost of a project like that would be too big for the Three Bar to
stand," she objected.

"I'll put it up," he offered. "The money from the sale of the little
old Box L. I want to see this go through. We can square accounts when
the Three Bar makes the top of the hill."

He pointed to a bunch of cows that fed in a bottom below them.

"Look at that. Every color under the sun--and every shape. Let's put
the flats in hay, girl, and start grading the Three Bar up. We'll weed
out the runty humpbacked critters and all off-color she-stuff; keep
only straight red cows. It doesn't take much more feed to turn out a
real beef steer than one of those knife-backed brothers down in the
flat. We'll gather our own cows close to the home ranch and shove
other brands off our range, throw forty white-face bulls out close
round the place and start building up real beef; steers that will bring
fifty a head where those runts bring twenty-five. And big red
she-s