mething better than wages, if you
stay with your claims and prove up. Of course, I can't say anything
about us buying out your claims--that's fraud, according to Hoyle;
but you ain't simple-minded--you know your land won't be begging for a
buyer, in case you should ever want to sell.

"There's another thing. This will not only head off the dry-farmers
from overstocking what little range is left--it'll make a dead-line for
sheep, too. We've been letting 'em graze back and forth on the bench
back here beyond our leased land, and not saying much, so long as they
didn't crowd up too close, and kept going. With all our claims under
fence, do you realize what that'll mean for the grass?"

"Josephine! There's feed for considerable stock, right over there on our
claims, to say nothing of what we'll cover," exclaimed Pink.

"I'd tell a man! And if we get water on the desert claims--" Chip
grinned down at him. "See what we've been passing up, all this time.
We've had some of it leased, of course--but that can't be done again.
There's been some wire-pulling, and because we ain't politicians we got
turned down when the Old Man wanted to renew the lease. I can see now
why it was, maybe. This dry-farm business had something to do with it,
if you ask me."

"Gee whiz! And here we've been calling Andy a liar," sighed Cal Emmett.

"Aw, jest because he happened to tell the truth once, don't cut no ice,"
Happy Jack maintained with sufficient ambiguity to avert the natural
consequences.

"Of course, it won't be any gold-mine," Chip added dispassionately.
"But it's worth picking up, all right; and if it'll keep out a bunch
of tight-fisted settlers that don't give a darn for anything but what's
inside their own fence, that's worth a lot, too."

"Say, my dad's a farmer," Pink declared defiantly in his soft treble.
"And while I think of it, them eastern farmers ain't so worse--not the
brand I've seen, anyway. They're narrow, maybe--but they're human.
Damn it, you fellows have got to quit talking about 'em as if they were
blackleg stock or grasshoppers or something."

"We ain't saying nothing aginst farmers AS farmers, Little One" Big
Medicine explained forebearingly. "As men, and as women, and as kids,
they're mighty nice folks. My folks have got an eighty-acre farm in
Wisconsin," he confessed unexpectedly, "and I think a pile of 'em. But
if they was to come out here, trying to horn in on our range, I'd lead
'em gently to the railroad,