"Don't you
like dinner any more? It's ready about now."

Shorty forded the creek and slung his saddle off, and on invitation
turned Pedro, his buckskin pony, into Balaam's pasture. This was green,
the rest of the wide world being yellow, except only where Butte Creek,
with its bordering cottonwoods, coiled away into the desert distance
like a green snake without end. The Virginian also turned his horse into
the pasture. He must stay at the ranch till the Judge's horses should be
found.

"Mrs. Balaam's East yet," said her lord, leading the way to his dining
room.

He wanted Shorty to dine with him, and could not exclude the Virginian,
much as he should have enjoyed this.

"See any Indians?" he enquired.

"Na-a!" said Shorty, in disdain of recent rumors.

"They're headin' the other way," observed the Virginian. "Bow Laig Range
is where they was repawted."

"What business have they got off the reservation, I'd like to know,"
said the ranchman, "Bow Leg, or anywhere?"

"Oh, it's just a hunt, and a kind of visitin' their friends on the South
Reservation," Shorty explained. "Squaws along and all."

"Well, if the folks at Washington don't keep squaws and all where they
belong," said Balaam, in a rage, "the folks in Wyoming Territory 'ill do
a little job that way themselves."

"There's a petition out," said Shorty. "Paper's goin' East with a lot of
names to it. But they ain't no harm, them Indians ain't."

"No harm?" rasped out Balaam. "Was it white men druv off the O. C.
yearlings?"

Balaam's Eastern grammar was sometimes at the mercy of his Western
feelings. The thought of the perennial stultification of Indian affairs
at Washington, whether by politician or philanthropist, was always sure
to arouse him. He walked impatiently about while he spoke, and halted
impatiently at the window. Out in the world the unclouded day was
shining, and Balaam's eye travelled across the plains to where a blue
line, faint and pale, lay along the end of the vast yellow distance.
That was the beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over there
were the red men, ranging in unfrequented depths of rock and pine--their
forbidden ground.

Dinner was ready, and they sat down.

"And I suppose," Balaam continued, still hot on the subject, "you'd
claim Indians object to killing a white man when they run on to him good
and far from human help? These peaceable Indians are just the worst in
the business."

"That's so," assented the