built upon claims belonging to the Happy Family.
She must tell Blake that. Also, Blake must help make some arrangement
whereby the Happy Family could hire an outfit to gather their stock and
the alien stock which they meant to drive back out of the Badlands. And
there was Irish, who had quietly taken to the hills again as soon as
the Kid returned. Blake was needed to look into that particular bit of
trouble and try and discover just how serious it was. The man whom Irish
had floored with a chair was apparently hovering close to death--and
there were these who emphasized the adverb and asserted that the hurt
was only apparent, but could prove nothing.

"And you tell 'im," directed the Old Man querulously, "that I'll stand
good for his time while he's lookin' after things for the boys. And tell
'im if he's so doggoned scared I'll buy into the game, he needn't to
show up here at the ranch at all; tell him to stay in Dry Lake if he
wants to--serve him right to stop at that hotel fer a while. But tell
him for the Lord's sake git a move on. The way it looks to me, things
is piling up on them boys till they can't hardly see over the top, and
something's got to be done. Tell 'im--here! Give me a sheet of paper and
a pencil and I'll tell him a few things myself. Chances are you'd smooth
'em out too much, gitting 'em on paper. And the things I've got to say
to Blake don't want any smoothing."

The things he wrote painfully with his rheumatic hand were not smoothed
for politeness' sake, and it made the Old Man feel better to get them
off his mind. He read the letter over three times, and lingered over the
most scathing sentences relishfully. He sent one of his new men to town
for the express purpose of mailing that letter, and he felt a glow of
satisfaction at actually speaking his mind upon the subject.

Perhaps it was just as well he did not know that Blake was in Dry Lake
when the letter reached his office in Helena, and that it was forwarded
to the place whence it had started. Blake was already "getting a move
on," and he needed no such spur as the Old Man's letter. But the letter
did the Old Man a lot of good, so that it served its purpose.

Blake had no intention of handling the case from the Flying U porch,
for instance. He had laid his plans quite independently of the Flying U
outfit. He had no intention of letting Irish be arrested upon a trumped
up charge, and he managed to send a word of warning to that hot-headed
y