re this afternoon if
you'll tamp the rest uh them posts."

"Aw, you stick to your own job! How was it when I wanted you to help
pull the old wire off that hill fence and git it ready to string down
here? You wasn't crazy about workin' with bob wire then, I noticed. You
said--"

"What I said wasn't a commencement to what I'll say again," Pink began
truculently, and so the subject turned effectually from Andy Green.

Weary smoked meditatively while they wrangled, and when the group broke
up for the afternoon's work he went unobtrusively in search of Andy.
He was not quite easy in his mind concerning the alleged joke. He had
looked full at the possibilities of the situation--granting Andy had
told the truth, as he sometimes did--and the possibilities had not
pleased him. He found Andy morosely replacing some broken strands in his
cinch, and he went straight at the mooted question.

Andy looked up from his work and scowled. "This ain't any joke with me,"
he stated grimly. "It's something that's going to put the Flying U
out of business if it ain't stopped before it gets started. I've been
worrying my head off ever since day before yesterday; I ain't in the
humor to take anything off those imitation joshers up there--I'll tell
yuh that much."

"Well, but how do you figure it can be stopped?" Weary sat soberly down
on the oats box and absently watched Andy's expert fingers while they
knotted the heavy cotton cord through the cinch-ring. "We can't stand
'em off with guns."

Andy dropped the cinch and stood up, pushing back his hat and then
pulling it forward into place with the gesture he used when he was very
much in earnest. "No, we can't. But if the bunch is game for it there's
a way to block their play--and the law does all our fighting for us. We
don't have to yeep. It's like this, Weary counting Chip and the Little
Doctor and the Countess there's eleven of us that can use our rights up
here on the bench. I've got it all figured out. If we can get Irish and
Jack Bates to come back and help us out, there's thirteen of us. And
we can take homesteads along the creeks and deserts back on the bench,
and--say, do you know how much land we can corral, the bunch of us? Four
thousand acres and if we take our claims right, that's going to mean
that we get a dead immortal cinch on all the bench land that's worth
locating, around here, and we'll have the creeks, and also we'll have
the breaks corralled for our own stock.

"I