"Win tells me the ranch is sixty miles from here," smiled Alice, "and that's a pretty good ride for anybody." "Pretty good ride! Young woman, if that was all the ridin' I done today I'd b'en here before breakfast. I couldn't get away till afternoon--up before daylight this mornin', rode two horses plumb off their feet huntin' the wagons--foreman quit yesterday--best blamed foreman I ever had, too. Just up an' quit cold because he took a notion. Tried every which way to get him to stay--might's well talk to a rock. Away he went, Lord knows where, leavin' me nothin' on my mind except bein' owner, manager, ranch boss, an' wagon boss, besides tryin' to sell the outfit. Confounded young whelp! Best doggone cow-hand on the range." "Why did you have to hunt wagons, and what has a wagon boss got to do with a cattle ranch?" asked the girl. "The wagons are the round-up--the rodeo. We're right in the middle of the calf round-up. The grub wagon an' the bed wagon makes what you might call the field headquarters for the round-up--move every day till they cover the whole range." "How interesting!" exclaimed the girl, "I know I'm going to love it!" "Sure is interesting," remarked the old man, drily, "with the wagons twenty or thirty miles out in the foothills, an' workin' over into the sheep country, an' eighteen or twenty knot-headed cow-hands hatin' sheep, an' no foreman to hold 'em level, an' hayin' on full tilt at the home ranch, an' the ranch hands all huntin' the shade! Yes'm, interestin's one word for it--but there's a shorter one that I'm afraid the parson, here, wouldn't recommend that describes it a heap better." "By the way," said Endicott, "Mr. Cameron tells me that the cattle and sheep situation is a rather delicate one hereabouts. He says that you hold the respect of both factions--that you seem to have a peculiar knack in keeping the situation in hand----" "Peculiar knack!" exclaimed the ranchman, "peculiar knack's got nothin' to do with it! Common sense, young man! Just plain common sense, an' maybe the ability to see that other folks has got rights, same as I have. The Y Bar stands for a square deal all the way around--when its own calves are branded, it quits brandin', an' it don't hold that open range means cattle range an' not sheep range. Any fair-minded man can take the Y Bar an' run it like I've run it, an' make money, an' let the other fellow make money, too. There's plenty of range for all of us if we keep our head. If you're afraid of buyin' into a war--don't buy. I can sell any day to parties I know are just layin' to get the Y Bar, an' the minute they got it, trouble would start an' there'd be hell a-poppin' all along the Mizoo. Somewhere there must be a man that'll buy that is fair-minded, an' not afraid to take holt an' run the outfit like I've run it." Endicott flushed slightly: "I am not afraid of it. I only wanted to know----"