l-bent.
Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch'd got down t' about a
hundred head--don't know what I ben a-hangin' on fer, only a man
hates t' give up an' own hisself beat out. An' my woman--she's a
fighter.

"She kep' standin' at my back like, oh, like--well, she kep' a-sayin'
'We'll win out yet, John, you see. Right'll win ev'ry time.' You see
we are just ready to get th' patent on our land. She couldn't give
that up, seems like. All this time gone an' nothin' gained. So we ben
a-hangin' on when things went from bad to worse. Th' herd's been
a-goin' down an' down. Calves with their tongues slit so's they'd lose
their mothers--fed up in some coulee by hand an' branded. Knowed 'em
by my own colour cattle, w'ich I drove in here five year ago--th'
yellers.

"Mothers killed outright an' th' calves branded. Oh, I know it
all--but what could I do? Kep' gettin' poorer an' poorer. Couldn't
afford enough riders t' protect 'em. Then couldn't afford any an'
tried t' make it go as th' boys got older. Courtrey, damn him, wants
me offen that piece o' land a-fore th' patent's granted. Him with his
twenty thousan' acres of Lost Valley now! An' how'd he get it? False
entry, that's what! How many men's come in here, took up land, 'sold
out' to Courtrey an' went? Or didn't go. A lot of 'em _didn't go_. We
all know that. An' who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th' men
that did wouldn't go--never--nowheres."

There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking
voice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wet
places below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of the
recital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of the
oppressor.

Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the last
yellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in his
hawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely.

For a long moment there was utter silence.

Then he began again.

"I knowed I wasn't welcome in th' Valley when I hadn't ben here more'n
six months. Th' first leetle string o' fence I put up fer corrals went
down, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th' woman's garden was
broke open an' trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched us
with mighty leetle t' eat in th' way o' truck. Next year she guarded
it herself some nights, sleepin' by day, an' oncet she took a shot at
some one that come prowlin' around. They let her fence alone after
that, but what'd th