? Got anybody that can shoot?"

"You bet he has. Young Will Whittaker is mighty near as good a shot as
Emerson is. He does most of the managing at their ranch headquarters,
while the old man works politics over in Plumas."

"Have they had any fights yet?"

"I haven't seen Emerson for a month. He was over in Plumas then and he
said he expected to have trouble and wanted me to come out."

"You don't mean to say that the Fillmore outfit is really tryin' to
drive Emerson and the rest of them out of the Fernandez mountains?"

"Well, they want to get control of the whole range for about a hundred
miles, if they can. And there's some politics mixed up in it, of
course. Old Whittaker is a Republican, you know, with a lot of
political schemes he wants to put through. Of course Emerson and the
others are Democrats and stand in with the party, and the Colonel
thinks he'll be doing the Republicans a big service if he can break
them up. Emerson expected the trouble to come to a head over the
spring round-up, for Colonel Whittaker said that Emerson and McAlvin
and the rest of them shouldn't round-up with him."

"Well, Emerson won't stand any such nonsense as that!"

"I guess Whittaker and his cow-boys will have to flirt gravel mighty
fast if they keep him from it!"

CHAPTER III

Unkempt, dusty and dirty, straggling its narrow length for a mile
along the irrigating ditch, the village of Las Plumas lay sleepily
quiet under the hot, white, brooding spring sunshine. A few
trim-looking places cuddled their yards and gardens close against the
life-giving channel, whose green banks, covered with vegetation and
shaded by trees, bisected the town. Elsewhere, naked adobe walls
flanked the dusty streets and from their stark surfaces gave back the
sunshine in a blinding glare. Here and there an umbrella tree, or a
locust, made a welcome splotch of green and shade down the length of
the barren, dusty streets, or the tiny yard of a house set back a
little from the adobe sidewalk held a few clumps of shrubs and
flowers. A half dozen cross streets sprang up among the scattered
adobe houses that dotted the edge of the plain rising to the Hermosa
mountains on the east, crossed the bridges of the irrigating ditch,
and ended in the one business street, which trailed a few closely
built blocks along the western edge of the town, near the railroad and
its depot. On one of these cross streets a yard and orchard of goodly
size extended fr