“I’ve got another idea that beats yours all to hell,” Younger retorted. “About fifteen years back a bunch of my stuff drifted off in a storm and fed out a few sections of Joe Hinman’s land that had blowed clear of snow. He thought I’d shoved ’em on there to eat him out. This is the first real good chance I’ve had to play even for what shape he left those cows of mine in after hazing ’em at a run through a foot of snow. What I’ll do to this bunch of Box T steers will be sufficient.” He motioned his grinning riders to fall in behind him as he headed up country with Carver. “Then it does look as if I’d soon be out of a job,” Carver said, “if you go and mess up my detail. Maybe you’d take me on for the summer.” “You was top hand for me once,” Younger returned. “And you could be again if you’d only stay at it. Anyway, I’ll put you on for the summer.” “This season will likely see the last big round-up of all history,” Carver predicted. “And I want to be part of it. I’d sort of planned to go in with your wagon. I guess this is the last. The order is out to comb every hoof from the unowned lands.” The old man’s face clouded. Two years before all cowmen had been ordered to clear their stock from the Cherokee Strip. They had grimly refused, and now the order had been issued again. “They mean business this time,” Carver predicted. “There’ll be cavalry patrols riding to keep an eye on the round-up, likely, and make sure that everything’s gathered and shoved outside. There’ll be upwards of two hundred thousand cows collected and marketed this summer in order to clear the Strip.” “Maybe you’re right, son,” Younger said. “It’s beginning to look that way. You don’t want to miss the round-up. The likes of it will never be seen again on this old footstool. All wiped out in a single season. It ain’t right. It just can’t be right.” The old man’s thoughts strayed from the immediate matter in hand, that of evening the old score with Hinman, and he nodded abstractedly to the comments of his younger companion. He was possessed of cows in plenty and if forced to market them he could cash in for a fortune; but this game was his life. Take away his cows and money would mean little. “I was just thinking, Nate,” Carver said. “It’ll take a long time to settle all this country up after you folks are ordered out with your stock, and there’ll be worlds of good range going to waste with nothing to eat it off. A man could hold a dodge-bunch down here on good feed and keep ’em moving from point to point. If we were questioned we could explain that we were trail herding ’em through when they up and made a night run off to one side; that we are just gathering ’em up again to move them on up to the Box T range.” “Box T!” Younger scoffed. “Joe Hinman, that wrinkled old pirate, wouldn’t let a second elapse before he’d be spreading the news that I had a bunch down here. He’d never let a Half Diamond H cow set foot on his range and ever get off with its hide on.”