"He could," Harris said. "But no man will make a complaint. They can rustle every steer in the country and the losers are afraid to make a report. Every outfit is supposed to protect its own. If Alden should ride up to almost any ranch within a hundred miles and ask them if they'd missed any stock in the last three years they'd shake their heads and swear that they hadn't lost a hoof. But the Three Bar has a clean page; we're not afraid he'll get a line on us while we're having him round up some one else. The first time we get a scrap of real evidence on any man we'll call Alden in." "You told me the Three Bar herds have been cut in half," Deane said. "How much evidence do you need?" "It's like this:" Harris explained. "We'd have to make a specific charge against a few men--name them in connection with some raid. That nest down there is only a sort of stopping place. There's twenty or so that use it on and off. Maybe the very men we'd name would be in Coldriver or some other place and could prove it. Even if they couldn't we couldn't get a man to testify. Then too, rustling is about the hardest thing in the world to prove. There's a dozen ways they can work it. I could catch some of them driving a bunch of Three Bar cows toward the Idaho line. They'd look up and see me and calmly ride on past the cows. They could say the bunch was just drifting ahead of their horses--that they weren't driving them at all. Who can prove a case of rustling even if you see it, unless you actually catch one altering a brand--which they wouldn't do anywhere within a hundred miles of that brand's range." "Then how will you ever convict one?" Deane asked. "The only way to convict a rustler right now is to kill him and swear that you run up on him changing a brand," Harris said. "I expect that's what we'll have to do." Deane looked at the girl to determine how she met this suggestion. Instead of the shiver of distaste which he rather expected her lips were pressed tight. "A little of that would help Slade too," she said. "He told me just now that he'd smash the Three Bar." The man reflected that this sort of a life could not help but wear off some of her natural fineness and harden her. They followed the rims till they had cleared the Breaks, then angled down to the foothills and headed for the Three Bar. They held a steady gait until a half hour after sunset and camped in the open near a tiny spring. Again Deane was impressed with the impropriety of the girl's being out with two men who loved her and the thought was an ache that remained with him. It was a natural reaction,--the lifelong training to guard against appearances which were open to criticism as religiously as against the accomplished fact.