e
Three Bar range again. But now the country has changed. At times it
seems as if it would be a vast relief to me to leave it all behind."

"It's the people that have changed," he said. "It's only the history
of all frontiers. The first settlers win it for themselves. Then
clashing elements creep in; sheep and cattle wars; stockmen and
squatter quarrels; later the weeding out of the wild bunch--parasites
like Harper's crew: still later there'll be squabbles between the
nesters themselves; jumping claims and rowing over water rights. Then
it will all iron out, the country will settle up according to its
topography and give its best to the human race. You may grow to think
you hate the hills for what happens to you individually during the
change--but it's in your blood to love them and that love will always
return."

"It may return if the Three Bar weathers the change," she said.

"We'll weather it," he asserted cheerfully. "Shall I tell you how?"

"Yes. Tell me," she said. "I'd like to know. The Three Bar is going
to show another loss this year."

"And likely the next," he assented. "Maybe still another. But that
will be about all."

"That will surely be all," she said. "Two more years of decrease and
there won't be enough left of the Three Bar to divide."

"Listen," he said, tapping his knee with a forefinger to emphasize his
point. "Cal Warren always wanted to put the Three Bar flats under
cultivation. He's probably told you that a hundred times."

"A thousand," she amplified. "But the sentiment of the country was
against it the same as it is to-day."

"But it's not," he contradicted.

"Then why all those signs?" she asked. "They run every squatter out
now just as they always did."

"Who?" he asked. "Do you have a hand in it?"

"No," she said. "The others do."

"Probably they think the same of you," he pointed out. "There's just
one man in this country that profits by keeping that no-squatter
sentiment alive."

"You must hate Slade," she observed.

"I haven't any feeling toward him one way or the other," he asserted.
"He's an obstacle, that's all. That's the way he would feel about me
if I stood in his way. There's at least one Slade in every locality
and in every line of business throughout the world. Ambition for
power. He wants the whole countryside. If he'd win out on that he'd
want the next--and finally he'd want the world."

"He has this particular part of the world