The others laughed, but with small merriment. They were either small
cattle owners themselves or range riders whose living depended on the
business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated
so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most
of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did
not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined
hand with him.

"You're dead right, Mr. Weaver. It ce'tainly must be stopped."

The man who spoke rolled a cigarette and lit it. Like the rest he was in
the common garb of the plains. The broad-brimmed felt hat, the shiny
leather chaps, the loosely knotted bandanna, were as much a matter of
course as the hard-eyed, weather-beaten look that comes of life under an
untempered sun. But Brill Healy claimed a distinction above his fellows.
He was a black-haired, picturesque fellow, as supple as a panther,
reckless and yet wary.

"We'll have rustling as long as we have nesters, Brill," Buck told him.

"If that's the case we'll serve notice on the nesters to get out," Healy
replied.

Buck grinned. Indomitable fighter though he was, he had been unable to
roll back the advancing tide of settlement. Here and there homesteaders
had taken up land and had brought in small bunches of cattle. Most of
these were honest men, others suspected rustlers. But Buck's fiat had
not sufficed to keep them out. They had held stoutly to their own
and--he suspected--a good deal more than their own. Calves had been