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forty of fifty men to throw against the strangers,

what would that accomplish?

 

Men who were willing to jump claims knew beforehand the resistance they

were likely to encounter, and they were sure to come well prepared. If

they were not great in numbers, they would be great in ability. Not a

soul among the crowd down there, as Spot Gregory shrewdly guessed, but

was a thorough ruffian, a mankiller, or ambitious to kill men. Every one

of them had proved his desperate character, or he would not now be

present. They were hand-picked villains who probably had lived by the

guns for years, hunting down their fellow men as more respectable hunters

might chase bears or wolves.

 

So Gregory felt a rising sense of helplessness.

 

He was on the verge of swinging his horse about and rushing for the ranch

house, to let his employer know the disaster which had befallen them. The

water claim of the Milman ranch had been jumped, and that would be

tidings to make Milman turn green with passion.

 

However, Milman was too much the honorable man to meet murder with

murder. Bare-handed aggression he had plenty of courage to meet, but if

there was the ghost of a legal form lined up against him, he would be

certain to wait for the law to show him the way.

 

The law!

 

How could the law act in time to save the thousands of the Milman cattle

from death by water famine?

 

In the meantime, it was better to go down and look this trouble in the

face. So he cantered the nervous mustang down the easy slope toward the

men who, on this side of the river, were toiling to run the fence line.

There were four of them so employed, two cutting post holes, stamping out

the earth with cutters, or drilling it with augers. The second pair set

up the posts and tamped them in place, or stretched the wire.

 

The posts were poor, twisted ones, and the wire was but loosely

strung—two meager strands of it. Plainly the boundary was not to be

strong, unless gunpowder could strengthen it enough!

 

In the background, there was a fifth man, who rode slowly back and forth,

keeping an eye on the fence builders, and again on those hands who warded

back the thirsting cows as they descended from the hills. To this fellow

of apparent authority, Spot Gregory advanced, with a wave of his hand,

which the other came forward willingly to meet.

 

They met one another close to the fence makers, and the latter stopped

work gladly to watch the interview.

 

As for the rider, Gregory found him to be the true Western type, spare in

flesh, but looking tough as whip leather. A magnificent forehead rose

above the lean, brown face.

 

“Hello!” said Spot Gregory. “You’re Champ Dixon, ain’t you?”

 

“That’s me,” said Dixon, pleasantly. “I’ve met you, somewheres. Gregory.

Is that your name?”

 

“Yeah. That’s my name. What in hell-fire are you up to here, Dixon?”

 

“Oh, just picking up a right smart little piece of ground for me and my

partner.”

 

“Who’s your partner?”

 

“Billy Shay.”

 

“Shay!” exclaimed Spot angrily. “That—”

 

The other raised his gloved hand.

 

“Easy, Gregory!” he warned.

 

And Spot Gregory set his teeth with a stifled groan.

 

He had expected the worst, and yet this was a little too bad even for his

expectations. The snakelike cunning of Shay and the deadly hand of Dixon

to back him up made the combination hard to defeat.

 

For his own part, he was a mere child before such a practiced assassin as

Champ Dixon.

 

“Dixon,” said he. “How’re you gonna hack this up in the law courts? Or is

it only a way to blackmail poor Milman out of money to water his cattle,

for a few days?”

 

“Money for watering his cows?” said the other genially. “Well, old son,

the fact is that we wouldn’t plunge like this except for a big thing.

We’ve looked into Milman’s title to his whole ranch, and it ain’t worth a

whoop! So we’ve took over the piece that we want!”

Chapter 16 Storm Clouds

When discretion and judgment were considered; Spot Gregory seemed to

possess both. He looked Dixon in the eye. He even allowed himself time to

glance to the side, and to observe the broad grins upon the faces of the

four men who were looking on, leaning on the posts of the fence.

 

“Well,” said he, “if you was to hunt around to pick out a piece of ground

that would do you less good, and more harm to Milman. I dunno that you

could of picked better than this.”

 

“No, sir,” said Champ Dixon, “I dunno that we could I looked over this

here layout personal, a while back, and that’s what I figgered myself.”

 

“Tell me, Dixon,” said the foreman of the ranch, “what made you boys have

it in for Milman? What’s he ever done agin’ you, or any of you?”

 

Champ Dixon, at this unimpassioned appeal, was forced to scratch his head

with such earnestness that he pushed his hat far back.

 

“What’s he done agin’ us?” he echoed, while he gathered his thoughts.

 

“Yeah. That’s what I’m askin’.”

 

“Well,” said Champ, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll tell you about that.

Out here in the Far West, where they’s still a frontier, as the hooks put

it, and out here where the hair grows long, they ain’t much law nor not

much respect for the other feller’s rights, is they?”

 

“Well, in a way I reckon that there ain’t,” said Spot Gregory.

 

“And I reckon that worryin’ about how the law goes through pretty nigh

bites you folks to the bone!”

 

Champ Dixon permitted himself a broad grin.

 

“Well,” said he, “maybe that’s a way of puttin’ it. The way that it seems

to me, a whole lot of gents, they step into this here country, out here,

and they says to themselves that the country’s so big that they got a

right to pick out the parts of it that they want for themselves. So they

sashays in and they picks out what they want and they don’t pay nothin’

much for it, and they settles down onto it, and they says that because

they’re here, there ain’t any reason why they should ever have to budge.

Now, sir, some of us, we take a look around and we say that the pigs that

is the fattest might be the pigs that is the most profitable to drive to

market, if you foller what I mean?”

 

“Yeah, I sort of foller your drift,” answered Spot Gregory. “And so you

want to budge the old landholders?”

 

“You might say that!” remarked Champ Dixon. “What I mean is that here is

the Milmans set down on the land and gettin’ hog-fat, and how? What title

they got to this land, I ask you?”

 

“Why, I dunno that anybody has asked that question for a long time,” said

Gregory. “Everybody that I know has took it for granted that the Milmans

own the Milman land.”

 

“Yeah,” said Dixon. “They’s a lot of incurious folks in this neck of the

woods. But supposin’ that I ask you, how did the Milmans get this here

land. D’you know?”

 

“Why, they bought it from the Injuns.”

 

“And who sold it to them?”

 

“I dunno that I know that.”

 

“I’ll tell you. It was Little Crow, was his name. He was a tolerable

sizeable man, in his day, and a big war chief. And he had a pile of

scalps to his credit. He’s got a war suit all trimmed up with scalp

locks. He’s got more than one suit. If he goes on a Comanche trail, he

can put on a suit dressed up with Comanche hair. And if he tackles a

white war party, he’s got a suit tricked up with white folks’ hair. Some

tolerable long and golden hair, in the lot. And he’s a great fighter,

this here Little Crow. When it comes to the finish, it takes booze and

three whites to take the scalp of that infant, what I mean to tell you.

 

“Well, sir, along comes old Daddy Milman, before this here boy of his

ever see the light, and he reckons that he’ll take up land here. And he

picks up the spot that’ll suit him the best.

 

“And then he finds out that it’s Injun land. And he says, what Injun shall

he buy it from, him wantin’ to be all straight and honorable. And so he

picks on the big war chief and grand scalp-getter, Little Crow, that had

counted so many coups that he gets the arm ache every time that there

come along a grand feast and lyin’ party among the tribe.

 

“So he goes to Little Crow and he says, what do you want? And whatcha

think that Little Crow wants?”

 

“I dunno,” said Spot Gregory, “that I ever heard.”

 

“Most folks ain’t. But it’s been our business to find out. What he wants

is six rifles, all in prime shape, and a hundred rounds of ammunition for

each of ‘em, and two dozen hosses—because that’s about as high as he can

count—and one whole keg of thirty-six gallons of fire water.”

 

“That’s what he wanted for this ranch?”

 

“Aye,” said Champ Dixon, “and he thought that he was gettin’ a whale of a

big bargain, and that he could step in and run out the whites with the

guns that he had got from them whenever he had a mind. So he makes the

bargain, and old Milman, he counts out the goods, and he goes better than

his bargain, and he makes that set of rifles the finest that can be got,

and he chucks in an extra lot of ammunition, and he makes them hosses an

even thirty, and the best that money can get or ropes steal off the

range. And that fire water he makes, it’s the pure stuff, because he

don’t make it alcohol, prune juice, and water, but he makes it straight

alcohol, and on the night of that sale, and payment, they is three braves

that plumb die of joy, and a couple of squaws they change husbands, and

they is five sets of hair lifted inside of the next week or so, because

the whole bunch goes on the warpath. But anyway, the Injuns is happy, and

Milman is happy. He’s got a coupla million dollars’ worth of land, and

the Injuns, they has got one grand jag.

 

“After a while, they start in tryin’ to get paid over again.”

 

“Blackmail?” said Spot Gregory.

 

“You can call it that,” admitted the other. “Anyway, they try to collect

some more of that thousand proof fire water, but they find that in behind

old Milman there has sneaked another man, by name of Uncle Sam, and when

the Injuns climb onto their war ponies, old Uncle Sam, he hits out of the

dark, and pops ‘em in the nose and knocks ‘em off again. You foller

that?”

 

“I foller all of that,” said Spot Gregory, looking with the corner of his

eye at a tangle of fifty thirsting cows who were trying to rush to the

water, but in vain.

 

“Now along comes Billy Shay and me,” continued the narrator, “and we get

to lookin’ over the lay of the land, and we get to seein’ how much law

and order they is around here, and how good a claim a lot of these cattle

kings has

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