Chapter 9. What It Meant to Keith

"Dick, I wish you'd tell me about this leasing business. There are points which I don't understand." Beatrice leaned over and smoothed Rex's sleek shoulder with her hand.

"What do you want to understand it for? The thing is done now. We've got the fence-posts strung, and a crew hired to set them."

"You needn't snap your words like that, Dick. It doesn't matter--only I was wondering why Mr. Cameron acted so queer yesterday when I told him about it."

"You told Keith? What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything. He just looked things."

"Where did you see him?" Dick wanted to know.

"Well, dear me! I don't see that it matters where I saw him. You're getting as inquisitive as mama. If you think it concerns you, why, I met him accidentally when I was fishing with Dorman. He was coming to see you, but you were gone, so he stopped and talked for a few minutes. Was there anything so strange about that? And I told him you were leasing the Pine Ridge country, and he looked--well, peculiar. But he wouldn't say anything."

"Well, he had good reason for looking peculiar. But you needn't have told him I did it, Trix. Lay that at milord's door, where it belongs. I don't want Keith to blame me."

"But why should he blame anybody? It isn't his land, is it?"

"No, it isn't. But--you see, Trix, it's this way: A man goes somewhere and buys a ranch--or locates on a claim--and starts into the cattle business. He may not own more than a few hundred acres of land, but if he has much stock he needs miles of prairie country, with water, for them to range on. It's an absolute necessity, you see. He takes care to locate where there is plenty of public land that is free to anybody's cattle.

"Take the Pool outfit, for instance. We don't own land enough to feed one-third of our cattle. We depend on government land for range for them. The Cross outfit is the same, only Keith's is on a smaller scale. He's got to have range outside his own land, which is mostly hay land. This part of the State is getting pretty well settled up with small ranchers, and then the sheep men keep crowding in wherever they can get a show--and sheep will starve cattle to death; they leave a range as bare as a prairie-dog town. So there's only one good bit of range left around here, and that's the Pine Ridge country, as it's called. That's our main dependence for winter range; and now when this drought has struck us, and everything is drying up, we've had to turn all our cattle down there on account of water.

"Ever since I took charge of the Pool, Keith and I threw in together and used the same range, worked our crews together, and fought the sheepmen together. There was a time when they tried to gobble the Pine Ridge range, but it didn't go. Keith and I made up our minds that we needed