He switched abruptly away from the topic in hand and reverted to the subject they had discussed an hour past. "We've a clear field now with nothing on our minds but the job of putting the Three Bar on its feet," he said. "The Three Bar is a pretty small outfit the way things are to-day but in a few more years the brand that runs three thousand head will be almost in the class of cattle kings. The range will be settled with an outfit roosting on every available site. The big fellows will find their range cut up and then they're through. If the Three Bar files on all the water out of Crazy Loop and covers the flat with hay we'll control all the range for a number of miles each way. There's not another site short of Brandon's place west of us--twelve miles or so; about the same to the east; still farther off south of us. We'll be riding the crest." "If we can only hold on against Slade," she agreed. "But can we?" "Watch us!" he said. "The Brandons would file on their home basin and put the V L bottoms in hay to-morrow if they could. McVey's been wanting to do it on the Halfmoon D ever since he bought out the brand five years back. They're all afraid to start. But they'll be for us--and follow us as soon as we show them it can be done. Art Brandon is repping with us and I've been sounding him out. You talk to him. In the meantime you try and get a letter off to the Judge to-day." The girl nodded. "We'll try it," she said. "I know that Cal Warren would rather see the Three Bar go to pieces from its own pressure, fighting from the inside to grow, than to see it whittled down from the outside without our fighting back." She crossed to her teepee to write the letter asking Judge Colton's advice on this matter which would mean the turning point in Three Bar affairs. An hour later a man rode away from the wagon, his bed roll packed on a led horse, heading for Brill's with the message that meant so much to the Three Bar. As he left Harris handed him two letters he had written weeks past, before leaving the ranch. Presumably only the three of them knew of the intended move but in the course of the next few days it had become rumored among the men that the Three Bar was to turn into a farming outfit. The girl learned that Carpenter was the source of these whispers. Hanson, the rep from the Halfmoon D, apprised her of this fact. Ever since the departure of Morrow Carp had been sullen. Twice he had taken exceptions to some order of Harris's but the new foreman had patiently overlooked the fact. However on the fifth day after the departure of Horne with the letter to Judge Colton, Harris whirled on the man as he made an anti-squatter remark when the hands were gathered for the noon meal. "That'll be all," he said. "I'll figure out your time. You took things up where Morrow left off. Now you can go hunt him up and compare notes." "Can't a man speak his mind?" Carp demanded.