When the tour of inspection had brought them again to the grove where
the men were at work, they found two new arrivals.

These were evidently brothers, as their square-cut features proclaimed.
They squatted side by side on their heels. Two good horses with the
heavy saddles and coiled ropes of the stockmen looked patiently over
their shoulders. A mule, carrying a light pack, wandered at will in the
background. The men wore straight-brimmed, wide felt hats, short
jumpers, and overalls of blue denim, and cowboy boots armed with the
long, blunt spurs of the craft. Their faces were stubby with a week's
growth, but their blue eyes were wide apart and clear.

"Hullo, Pollock," greeted Plant, as he dropped, blowing, into his chair.

The men nodded briefly, never taking their steady gaze from Plant's
face. After a due and deliberate pause, the elder spoke.

"They's a thousand head of Wright's cattle been drove in on our ranges
this year," said he.

"I issued Wright permits for that number, Jim," replied Plant blandly.

"But that's plumb crowdin' of our cattle off'n the range," protested the
mountaineer.

"No, it ain't," denied Plant. "That range will keep a thousand cattle
more. I've had complete reports on it. I know what I'm doing."

"It'll _keep_ them, all right," spoke up the younger, "which is saying
they won't die. But they'll come out in the fall awful pore."

"I'm using my judgment as to that," said Plant.

"Yore judgment is pore," said the younger Pollock, bluntly. "You got to
be a cattleman to know about them things."

"Well, I know Simeon Wright don't put in cattle where he's going to
lose on them," replied Plant. "If he's willing to risk it, I'll back his
judgment."

"Wright's a crowder," the older Pollock took up the argument quietly.
"He owns fifty thousand head. Me and George, here, we have five hunderd.
He just aims to summer his cattle, anyhow. When they come out in the
fall, he will fat them up on alfalfa hay. Where is George and me and the
Mortons and the Carrolls, and all the rest of the mountain folks going
to get alfalfa hay? If our cattle come out pore in the fall, they ain't
no good to us. The range is overstocked with a thousand more cattle on
it. We're pore men, and Wright he owns half of Californy. He's got a
million acres of his own without crowdin' in on us."

"This is the public domain, for all the public----" began Plant,
pompously, but George Pollock, the younger, cut in.

"We