"That's a matter for your civil authorities, sir; I have nothing to do with it at all." "You ain't got--nothing--?" Chadron's amazement seemed to overcome him. He stopped, his eyes big, his mouth open; he turned his head from side to side in dumbfounded way, as if to find another to bear witness to this incredible thing. "I tell you they're threatenin' my property, and the property of my neighbors!" protested Chadron, stunned, it seemed, that he should have to stop for details and explanations. "We've got millions invested--if them fellers gobbles up our land we're ruined!" "Sir, I can sympathize with you in your unfortunate business, but if I had millions of my own at stake under similar conditions I would be powerless to employ, on my own initiative, the forces of the United States army to drive those brigands away." Chadron looked at him hard, his hat on his head, where it had remained all the time, his eyes staring in unspeakable surprise. "The hell you would!" said he. "You and your neighbors surely can raise enough men to crush the scoundrels, and hang their leader to a limb," the colonel suggested. "Call out your men, Chadron, and ride against him. I never took you for a man to squeal for help in a little affair like this." "He's got as many as a hundred men organized, maybe twice that"--Chadron multiplied on the basis of damage that his men had suffered--"and my men tell me he's drillin' 'em like soldiers." "I'm not surprised to hear that," nodded the colonel; "that man Macdonald's got it in him to do that, and fight like the devil, too." "A gang of 'em killed three of my men a couple of days ago when I sent 'em up there to his shack to investigate a little matter, and Macdonald shot my foreman up so bad I guess he'll die. I tell you, man, it's a case for troopers!" "What has the sheriff and the rest of you done to restore order?" "I took twenty of my men up there yisterday, and a bunch of Sam Hatcher's from acrosst the river was to join us and smoke that wolf out of his hole and hang his damn hide on his cussed bob-wire fence. But hell! they was ditched in around that shack of his'n, I tell you, gentlemen, and he peppered us so hard we had to streak out of there. I left two of my men, and Hatcher's crew couldn't come over to help us, for them damn rustlers had breastworks throwed up over there and drove 'em away from the river. They've got us shut out from the only ford in thirty miles." "Well, I'll be damned!" said the colonel, warming at this warlike news. "Macdonald's had the gall to send me notice to keep out of that country up the river, and to run my cattle out of there, and it's my own land, by God! I've been grazin' it for eighteen years!" "It looks like a serious situation," the colonel admitted. "Serious!" There was scorn for the word and its weakness in Chadron's stress. "It's hell, I tell you, when a man can't set foot on his own land!"