Chapter 15. The Kid Has Ideas of His Own

The Old Man sat out in his big chair on the porch, smoking and staring dully at the trail which led up the bluff by way of the Hog's Back to the benchland beyond. Facing him in an old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of leisurely enjoyment which belongs to the man who knows and can afford to burn good tobacco and who has the sense to, burn it consciously, realizing in every whiff its rich fragrance. The Honorable Blake flicked a generous half-inch of ash from his cigar upon a porch support and glanced shrewdly at the Old Man's abstracted face.

"No, it wouldn't do," he observed with the accent of a second consideration of a subject that coincides exactly with the first. "It wouldn't do at all. You could save the boys time, I've no doubt--time and trouble so far as getting the cattle back where they belong is concerned. I can see how they must be hampered for lack of saddle-horses, for instance. But--it wouldn't do, Whitmore. If they come to you and ask for horses don't let them have them. They'll manage somehow--trust them for that. They'll manage--" "But doggone it, Blake, it's for--"

"Sh-sh--" Blake held up a warning hand. "None of that, my dear Whitmore! These young fellows have taken claims in--er-- good faith." His bright blue eyes sparkled with a sudden feeling. "In the best of good faith, if you ask me. I--admire them intensely for what they have started out to do. But-- they have certain things which they must do, and do alone. If you would not thwart them in accomplishing what they have set out to do, you must go carefully; which means that you must not run to their aid with your camp-wagons and your saddle- horses, so they can gather the cattle again and drive them back where they belong. You would not be helping them. They would get the cattle a little easier and a little quicker-- and lose their claims."

"But doggone it, Blake, them boys have lived right here at the Flying U--why, this has been their home, yuh might say. They ain't like the general run of punchers that roam around, workin' for this outfit and for that; they've stuck. Why, doggone it, what they done here when I got hurt in Chicago and they was left to run themselves, why, that alone puts me under obligations to help 'em out in this scrape. Anybody could see that. Ain't I a neighbor? Ain't neighbors got a right to jump in and help each other? There ain't no law agin--"

"Not against neighbors--no." Blake uncrossed his perfectly trousered legs and crossed them the other way, after carefully avoiding any bagging tendency. "But this syndicate- -or these contestants--will try to prove that you are not a neighbor only, but a--backer of the boys in a land-grabbing scheme. To avoid--"

"Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times I ain't! "The Old Man sat forward in his chair