"Yes; I'll have to hire a clerk, because I've got to 'tend to my outside work. I've been paintin' a sign to go over the front, and I tell you that name don't look so bad when it's in print, neither." "It isn't a name to be ashamed of, I'm sure," she cheered. "It's just as good as any other name, as far as I can see." "Phogenphole has got a good many shanks to it when you come to write it, though," reflected Smith. "It looks a lot better printed out. I think I'll git me one of these here typewritin'-machines. But say! Stop in and take a look at that sign the first time you're passin'; will you?" Agnes assured him that she would. Smith upended his board as if to go. "That feller, Boyle, he's gone," said he, nodding as if to confirm his own statement. "I saw him ride off up the river an hour or so ago." "Yes; I believe he went to Meander also." "He's a bad egg," Smith continued, "and he comes out of a basket of bad eggs. His old man, he's doin' more to keep this state down than anything you can name. He's got millions--and when I say millions, ma'am, I _mean_ millions--of acres of government land fenced and set off to his own use, and school lands, and other lands belongin' to you and me and the high-minded citizens of this country, and he don't pay a cent for the use of 'em, neither. Taxes? That man don't know what taxes is." "Why do the people permit him to do it?" "People! Huh! He's got rings in their noses, that's why. What he don't own he's got cowed. I tell you, I know of a town with three or four thousand people in it, and a schoolhouse as big as one of them old-country castles up on a hill, that ranchers has to go forty miles around to git to. Can't put a road through Boyle's land--government land, every inch of it. What do you think of that?" "I think a stop ought to be put to it, somehow." "Sure it had! All of it's subject to homestead entry, but it's got a five-wire fence around it, and thousands of sheep and cattle that the people of this country feed and bring up and fatten for nothing, for the Hon. Mr. Boyle. More than one man's been shot by Boyle's fence-riders for tryin' to homestead a piece of land he claims he's got a lease on. He ain't got no lease, but that don't matter. "There's men settled here in this reservation that's run up and down this state till they turned gray tryin' to locate on a piece of land. They've been hustled and humped along till they've lost heart, most of 'em, and I reckon they doubt now whether they're goin' to be let stay here from one day to another. "Cattlemen's kicked 'em out of one place, sheepmen out of another, till this state ain't got no farms--the only thing that it needs. Yes, I tell you, when a man sets up ag'in' a Boyle or any of that crowd in this state, he's due to lose. Well, say, don't forgit to stop in and see that sign; will you?" Agnes promised again to do so, and Smith departed, the sheep-herder's cooling-board under his arm.