ght by them if he chucks his job in a losing fight?"

The old-mannish air had returned. She followed the Ranger's glance
over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of
the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds against an evening sky.

"Smelters need timber," Wayland waved his hand towards the pall of
smoke over the River. "Smelters need coal. These men plan to take
theirs free. Yet the law arrests a man for stealing a scuttle of coal
or a cord of wood. One law for the rich, another for the poor; and who
makes the law?"

They could see the Valley below encircled by the Rim-Rocks round as a
half-hoop, terra-cotta red in the sunset. Where the river leaped down
a white fume, stood the ranch houses--the Missionary's and her Father's
on the near side, the Senator's across the stream. Sounds of mouth
organs and concertinas and a wheezing gramaphone came from the Valley
where the Senator's cow-boys camped with drovers come up from Arizona.

"Dick," she asked, "exactly what is the Senator's brand?"

"Circle X."

"A circle with an X in it?"

The Ranger stubbornly permitted the suspicion of a smile.

"So if the cattle from Arizona have only a circle, all a new owner has
to do is put an X inside?"

"And pay for the cattle," amplified Wayland.

"Or a circle with a line, put another line across?"

"And hand over the cash," added the Ranger.

"Or a circle dot, just put an X on top of the dot?"

"And fix the sheriff," explained the irrelevant [Transcriber's note:
irreverent?] Ranger.

"And the Senator has all the appointments to the Service out here?"

"No--disappointments," corrected Wayland.

They were both watching the grotesque antics of a squirrel negotiating
the fresh tips of a young spruce. The squirrel sat up on his hind legs
and chittered, whether at the Senator's brands or their heresy it would
be hard to tell; but they both laughed.

"Have you room on the Grazing Range for so many cattle?"

"Not without crowding--"

"You mean crowding the sheepmen, off," she said.

"What is the use of talking?" demanded Wayland petulantly. "Neither
you nor I dare open our mouths about it! Tell the sheriff; your ranch
houses will be burnt over your ears some night! Everybody knows what
has happened when a sheep herder has been killed in an accident, or
hustled back to foreign parts; but speak of it--you had better have cut
your tongue out! Fight it: you know what happened to my pred