any if you'd been cussing us
all out for the past two days."

Deane laughed and shook his head.

"I've been rather enjoying it," he said.

"You're just a plain, old-fashioned liar, Deane," Harris returned.
"You haven't been enjoying it any more than the rest of us--which is
mighty little; but you've got insides enough to let on like it's
considerable sport--which is a whole lot."

"No one else has done any beefing," Deane said. "So why should I?"

"This is everyday business with us," Harris pointed out. "And right
unusual for you. There's likely a number of things you do every day
back your way, but that doesn't signify that I could amble back there
and perform as well as you."

"I suspect you'd make out all right," Deane said. "Anyway--I'm much
obliged for the endorsement."

They camped again in the drizzle but by noon of the following day the
sun peeped through. In an hour every cloud and fog-bank had been
dispersed with a rapidity which is seen only in the hill country. The
ranger pulled up his horse as they struck a game trail in the saddle of
a low divide. A bunch of shod horses had been over it a few hours past.

"Some of the albino's layout," Wilton surmised. "They cross through
here to that camp of theirs down in the Breaks. I've run across their
trails up here before."

They rode out on to a spur and looked down on the low country. Slade
and the ranger were going on, the others returning to the Three Bar.
Harris pointed to the country spread out below them.

"That's the Breaks," he told Deane. "I'll point out the albino's
stronghold."

"While they're looking I want to talk to you," Slade said to Billie.

"Let's get together," he said, when the others had passed on. "Why are
you so dead set on making a squatter outfit of the Three Bar? Don't
you know the nesters will flock in here and cut the range all up as
soon as they see a chance?"

"Not my range," she said. "Outside of the V L and the Halfmoon D
there's not another site they can get water for, except maybe a couple
of spring gulches where flood reservoirs will hold back enough to water
a forty. So we'll still control our home range."

"But there's a dozen sites down in my range," he said.

"And a dozen small outfits wouldn't run any more cows than you do now,"
she said. "At least not on my range; so what difference will it make
to me? Why don't you have men file on all those sites?"

"You can't make a contract that will