roam around, workin' for this outfit and
for that; they've stuck. Why, doggone it, what they done here when I
got hurt in Chicago and they was left to run themselves, why, that alone
puts me under obligations to help 'em out in this scrape. Anybody could
see that. Ain't I a neighbor? Ain't neighbors got a right to jump in and
help each other? There ain't no law agin--"

"Not against neighbors--no." Blake uncrossed his perfectly trousered
legs and crossed them the other way, after carefully avoiding any
bagging tendency. "But this syndicate--or these contestants--will try to
prove that you are not a neighbor only, but a--backer of the boys in a
land-grabbing scheme. To avoid--"

"Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times
I ain't!" The Old Man sat forward in his chair and shook his fist
unabashed at his guest. "Them boys cooked that all up amongst
themselves, and went and filed on that land before ever I knowed a thing
about it. How can yuh set there and say I backed 'em? And that blonde
Jezebel--riding down here bold as brass and turnin' up her nose at Dell,
and callin' me a conspirator to my face!"

"I sticked a pin in her saddle blanket, Uncle Gee-gee. I'll bet she
wished she'd stayed away from here when her horse bucked her off."
The Kid looked up from trying to tie a piece of paper to the end of a
brindle kitten's switching tail, and smiled his adorable smile--that had
a gap in the middle.

"Hey? You leave that cat alone or he'll scratch yuh. Blake, if you can't
see--"

"He! He's a her and her name's Adeline. Where's the boys, Uncle
Gee-gee?"

"Hey? Oh, away down in the breaks after their cattle that got away. You
keep still and never mind where they've gone." His mind swung back to
the Happy Family, combing the breaks for their stock and the stock of
the nesters, with an average of one saddle-horse apiece and a camp outfit
of the most primitive sort--if they had any at all, which he doubted.
The Old Man had eased too many roundups through that rough country not
to realize keenly the difficulties of the Happy Family.

"They need horses," he groaned to Blake, "and they need help. If you
knowed the country and the work as well as I do you'd know they've got
to have horses and help. And there's their claims--fellers squatting
down on every eighty--four different nesters fer every doggoned one of
the bunch to handle! And you tell me I got to set here and not lift a
hand. You tell me I can