These were evidently brothers, as their square-cut features proclaimed. They squatted side by side on their heels. Two good horses with the heavy saddles and coiled ropes of the stockmen looked patiently over their shoulders. A mule, carrying a light pack, wandered at will in the background. The men wore straight-brimmed, wide felt hats, short jumpers, and overalls of blue denim, and cowboy boots armed with the long, blunt spurs of the craft. Their faces were stubby with a week's growth, but their blue eyes were wide apart and clear. "Hullo, Pollock," greeted Plant, as he dropped, blowing, into his chair. The men nodded briefly, never taking their steady gaze from Plant's face. After a due and deliberate pause, the elder spoke. "They's a thousand head of Wright's cattle been drove in on our ranges this year," said he. "I issued Wright permits for that number, Jim," replied Plant blandly. "But that's plumb crowdin' of our cattle off'n the range," protested the mountaineer. "No, it ain't," denied Plant. "That range will keep a thousand cattle more. I've had complete reports on it. I know what I'm doing." "It'll _keep_ them, all right," spoke up the younger, "which is saying they won't die. But they'll come out in the fall awful pore." "I'm using my judgment as to that," said Plant. "Yore judgment is pore," said the younger Pollock, bluntly. "You got to be a cattleman to know about them things." "Well, I know Simeon Wright don't put in cattle where he's going to lose on them," replied Plant. "If he's willing to risk it, I'll back his judgment." "Wright's a crowder," the older Pollock took up the argument quietly. "He owns fifty thousand head. Me and George, here, we have five hunderd. He just aims to summer his cattle, anyhow. When they come out in the fall, he will fat them up on alfalfa hay. Where is George and me and the Mortons and the Carrolls, and all the rest of the mountain folks going to get alfalfa hay? If our cattle come out pore in the fall, they ain't no good to us. The range is overstocked with a thousand more cattle on it. We're pore men, and Wright he owns half of Californy. He's got a million acres of his own without crowdin' in on us." "This is the public domain, for all the public----" began Plant, pompously, but George Pollock, the younger, cut in. "We've run this range afore you had any Forest Reserves, afore you came into this country, Henry Plant, and our fathers and our grandfathers! We've built up our business here, and we've built our ranches and we've made our reg'lations and lived up to 'em! We ain't going to be run off our range without knowin' why!" "Just because you've always hogged the public land is no reason why you should always continue to do so," said Plant cheerfully. "Who's the public? Simeon Wright? or the folks up and down the mountains, who lives in the country?" "You've got the same show as Wright or anybody else."