culture, gave his
words great weight and power. No one was ready with an answer but Lize,
who called out, with mocking accent: "Reddy, you're too good for the
Forest Service, you'd ought 'o be our next Governor."

This was a centre shot. Redfield flushed, and Cavanagh laughed. "Mr.
Supervisor, you are discovered!"

Redfield recovered himself. "I should like to be Governor of this State
for about four years, but I'm likelier to be lynched for being in command
of twenty 'Cossacks.'"

At this moment Sam Gregg entered the room, followed by a young man in an
English riding-suit. Seeing that "the star-boarder table" offered a couple
of seats, they pointed that way. Sam was plainly in war-like frame of
mind, and slammed his sombrero on its nail with the action of a man
beating an adversary.

"That is Sam Gregg and his son Joe--used to be ranch cattle-man, now one
of our biggest sheepmen," Cavanagh explained. "He's bucking the cattle-men
now."

Lee Virginia studied young Gregg with interest, for his dress was that of
a man to whom money came easy, and his face was handsome, though rather
fat and sullen. In truth, he had been brought into the room by his father
to see "Lize Wetherford's girl," and his eyes at once sought and found
her. A look of surprise and pleasure at once lit his face.

Gregg was sullen because of his interview with Cavanagh, which had been in
the nature of a grapple; and in the light of what Redfield had said, Lee
Virginia was able to perceive in these two men a struggle for supremacy.
Gregg was the greedy West checked and restrained by the law.

Every man in the room knew that Gregg was a bitter opponent of the Forest
Service, and that he "had it in" for the ranger; and some of them knew
that he was throwing more sheep into the forest than his permits allowed,
and that a clash with Redfield was sure to come. It was just like the
burly old Irishman to go straight to the table where his adversary sat.

Virginia's eyes fell before the gaze of these two men, for they had none
of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met.
They expressed something which angered her, though she could not have told
precisely why.

Redfield did not soften his words on Gregg's account; on the contrary he
made them still more cutting and to the line.

"The mere fact that I live near the open range or a national forest does
not give me any _rights_ in the range or forest," he was saying, as Gregg