"The trouble is that we didn't see Joe shoot the calf, so we can't swear he did it. Unless you can do that, you've got no case. It's not worth while, anyhow. You'd only get Joe's ill will, and he'd make us more trouble than we've got already, which would be considerable. Let's put all our time into getting a herd law through. We'll have to have all the ranchers in with us, and that includes the Bianes. So don't rub Joe the wrong way until we've got his vote. Joe is nothing compared with the trouble Ludlum may give us." "He certainly may," she admitted, thinking of what the pink-faced rider had told her. She decided to say nothing to Rob about that incident. She reflected that there was no use bothering him with every little matter that came up between her and Ludlum's herders over the question of the grazing. CHAPTER XVI For a week after the new wire was put on, Rob and Harry had a respite from fighting off Ludlum's herd. Once a day Harry made a circuit of the place and drove the outside cattle back into the hills; but the rest of the time she and Rob were virtually free from them. It was a great relief, for besides the fact that Rob had turned water on the wheat, which was beginning to look pretty dry, and that the time had come to cut the alfalfa, two of their steers had gone off with the range cattle and had not come back. Coming up from the barn with the last of the milk, Harry paused to look once more through their cattle which had come down to the fence with the milk cows and which now stood in the draw, nibbling the alfalfa that pushed through the fence. Rob was coming across the meadow, a hip-deep green expanse, and several times he stopped, pulled a blossom, and glanced critically over the field. The late frost that Rob had dreaded had struck the flat only the week before, and a general lack of water for the second crop would make hay very scarce and high. The foothill ranches, being on the slope, had more or less escaped the frost, and Rob's alfalfa had not been touched. Looking at it now, swaying quietly as the sea at full tide and crested with its foam of purple bloom, it was hard to realize that there were miles of parched foothill range near by, where cattle wandered, searching every mouthful of grass. "That hay will be just right to cut on the Fourth," he said, when at last he dropped wearily on the porch step. "On the Fourth! The prairie's supreme holiday! I thought the entire valley went fishing on the Fourth," said Harry. "I don't believe it will this year. Every one that's got any hay at all will cut it the minute it's ready. Robinson intends to cut a few days later than I do, and he's going to let me have his mower first, so I've got to work anyhow." "Well, if we've got to work, let's celebrate with a big dinner. How would that appeal to a haying crew? Ice cream, chicken fricassee, cherry pie. I thought so!"