are concerned."

Lee Virginia, crimson and burning hot, was in agony lest they should go
further in their criticism.

She knew that her mother kept a boarding-house; and while she was not
proud of it, there was nothing precisely disgraceful in it--many widowed
women found it the last resort; but this brutal comment on the way in
which her business was carried on was like a slash of mud in the face. Her
joy in the ride, her impersonal exultant admiration of the mountains was
gone, and with flaming cheeks and beating heart she sat, tense and bent,
dreading some new and keener thrust.

Happily the conversation turned aside and fell upon the Government's
forest policy, and Sam Gregg, a squat, wide-mouthed, harsh-voiced
individual, cursed the action of Ross Cavanagh the ranger in the district
above the Fork. "He thinks he's Secretary of War, but I reckon he won't
after I interview him. He can't shuffle my sheep around over the hills at
his own sweet will."

The young fellow on the back seat quietly interposed. "You want to be sure
you've got the cinch on Cavanagh good and square, Sam, or he'll be
a-ridin' _you_."

"He certainly is an arbitrary cuss," said the old woman. "They say he was
one of Teddy's Rough-riders in the war. He sure can ride and handle a gun.
'Pears like he thinks he's runnin' the whole range," she continued, after
a pause. "Cain't nobody so much as shoot a grouse since he came on, and
the Supervisor upholds him in it."

Lee Virginia wondered about all this supervision, for it was new to her.

Gregg, the sheepman, went on: "As I tell Redfield, I don't object to the
forest policy--it's a good thing for me; I get my sheep pastured cheaper
than I could do any other way, but it makes me hot to have grazing lines
run on me and my herders jacked up every time they get over the line. Ross
run one bunch off the reservation last Friday. I'm going to find out about
that. He'll learn he can't get 'arbitrary' with me."

Lee Virginia, glancing back at this man, felt sorry for any one who
opposed him, for she recalled him as one of the fiercest of the
cattle-men--one ever ready to cut a farmer's fence or burn a
sheep-herder's wagon.

The old woman chuckled: "'Pears like you've changed your tune since '98,
Sam."

He admitted his conversion shamelessly. "I'm for whatever will pay best.
Just now, with a high tariff, sheep are the boys. So long as I can get on
the reserve at seven cents a head--lambs free--I'm go