w?" she demanded. "What can you do?" She pointed toward the six
men near the wagon. "During the time you spent prowling the hills did
you ever come across those men?"

"Not to pal round with them," he confessed. "But I did cut their trail
now and then."

"Then don't you know what every other man in this country knows--that
those six and a lot more of their breed are responsible for every loss
within a hundred miles? They can operate against a brand one week and
stop at the home ranch and get fed the next. That's where the Three
Bar loss comes in. And I have to feed them when they come along."

"Some day we'll feed them and hang them right after the meal," he said.
"They're not the outfit that's going to be hardest to handle when the
time arrives."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "No one has ever been able to handle
them up to date."

"Did it ever strike you as queer that Slade could come into this
country twelve years back, with nothing but a long rope and a running
iron, and be owning thirty thousand head to-day?"

"He has the knack to protect his own and increase," she said. "They're
afraid of Slade."

Harris absently traced the Three Bar in the dust with a stick, then
fashioned the V L and the Halfmoon D, the three brands that ranged
along the foot of the hills. With a few deft strokes he transformed
the Three Bar into the Three Cross T, reworked the V L into a Diamond
Box and the Halfmoon D into Circle P, each one of the worked-overs
representing one of the dozen or so brands registered by Slade. He
blotted out his handiwork with the flat of his hand.

"Don't you suppose that the owner of every one of those brands knows
that?" she scoffed. "A clumsy rebrand would loom up for a mile.
Slade's no fool."

"Not in a thousand years," Harris agreed. "I was just commenting on
how peculiar it was that the three brands he runs farthest north should
be so easy worked over into any one of the three that his range
overlaps up this way. And I happen to know his farthest south brands
would work out the same way with the outfits at the other end of his
range. But he earmarks all of his brands the same--with jinglebobs;
and jinglebobs most generally drop off and leave nothing but a good big
piece absent out of the ear."

"So you think a man as big as Slade is stupid enough to try his hand at
brand-blotting on all sides at once?" she asked.

"No; nor even once on one side," he returned. "Not him. The on