“There now,” he suddenly remarked. “That’s sure enough the answer. Bart and Mattison didn’t want to carry that altercation to a finish but neither one would back down with folks looking on. These two stubborn old pirates are likely in a similar frame of mind. It’s always seemed to me someway, that they didn’t either one feel half so hostile toward the other as they made it appear. Joe’s giving Nate one final chance to show his hand--to take a whack at him or quit, hoping to cancel this old feud before Nate’s crowded out. He didn’t send me down here to keep out of trouble but shoved me right into it, knowing I’d do my best to make it as light as possible when it came. That’s all the idea I’ve got to work on.” The men breakfasted in the first light of day and the cows were allowed to scatter through the breaks on the far side of the creek. “You boys hold ’em within fair limits,” Carver instructed Bradshaw. “I’ll join you up here this evening. If a patrol should jump you by any off chance, you just explain that you’re driving them down to the Half Diamond H and laid over here a day to rest them.” “They’d be sure to believe us,” Bradshaw commented skeptically. “Old Nate Younger wouldn’t let a Kansas cow graze on the Half Diamond H for the price of it. Leastways not one of Hinman’s.” “He’s maybe changed his mind,” said Carver. “I’ll ride down and see.” He headed for the home ranch of the Half Diamond H, located on a branch of Cabin Creek some miles above that stream’s confluence with the Salt Fork of the Arkansas. Younger met him halfway, a rider having already reported the presence of the herd. “Now just what are you doing with a bunch of Joe Hinman’s cows in the quarantine strip and messing along the edge of my range?” he demanded. “You’ve rode for me on enough different occasions to know better than that.” “They just came fogging down here of their own accord,” Carver testified. “And I came after them.” “I’ll see that you get plenty of help when it comes to running them back,” Younger offered. He waved an arm toward a group of approaching riders. “Here come my boys now. I’ll throw ’em in behind those cows and jam them back across the line and scatter ’em over the whole west half of Kansas; or else take charge and hold ’em till I can get a detachment sent up from Fort Darlington to keep the whole mangy layout in quarantine till they’re fined more’n their market price. I’ll----” “I wouldn’t adopt either one of those courses you just mentioned Nate,” Carver counselled. “If a patrol jumped us I was going to proclaim that Joe was short of range and that you, being an old friend of his, had volunteered to run this bunch on your leases till the grass greened up next month. That was my idea.”