Part 13

At this moment Sam Gregg entered the room, followed by a young man in an English riding-suit. Seeing that "the star-boarder table" offered a couple of seats, they pointed that way. Sam was plainly in war-like frame of mind, and slammed his sombrero on its nail with the action of a man beating an adversary.

"That is Sam Gregg and his son Joe--used to be ranch cattle-man, now one of our biggest sheepmen," Cavanagh explained. "He's bucking the cattle-men now."

Lee Virginia studied young Gregg with interest, for his dress was that of a man to whom money came easy, and his face was handsome, though rather fat and sullen. In truth, he had been brought into the room by his father to see "Lize Wetherford's girl," and his eyes at once sought and found her. A look of surprise and pleasure at once lit his face.

Gregg was sullen because of his interview with Cavanagh, which had been in the nature of a grapple; and in the light of what Redfield had said, Lee Virginia was able to perceive in these two men a struggle for supremacy. Gregg was the greedy West checked and restrained by the law.

Every man in the room knew that Gregg was a bitter opponent of the Forest Service, and that he "had it in" for the ranger; and some of them knew that he was throwing more sheep into the forest than his permits allowed, and that a clash with Redfield was sure to come. It was just like the burly old Irishman to go straight to the table where his adversary sat.

Virginia's eyes fell before the gaze of these two men, for they had none of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met. They expressed something which angered her, though she could not have told precisely why.

Redfield did not soften his words on Gregg's account; on the contrary he made them still more cutting and to the line.

"The mere fact that I live near the open range or a national forest does not give me any rights in the range or forest," he was saying, as Gregg took his seat. "I enjoy the privilege of these Government grazing grounds, and I ought to be perfectly willing to pay the fee. These forests are the property of the whole nation; they are public lands, and should yield a revenue to the whole nation. It is silly to expect the Government to go on enriching a few of us stockmen at the expense of others. I see this, and I accept the change."

"After you've got rich at it," said Gregg.

"Well, haven't you?" retorted Redfield. "Are you so greedy that nothing will stop you?"

Lize threw in a wise word. "The sporting-houses of Kansas City and Chicago keep old Sam poor."

A roar of laughter followed this remark, and Gregg was stumped for a moment; but the son grinned appreciatively. "Now be good!"

Cavanagh turned to Virginia in haste to shield her from all that lay behind and beneath this sally of the older and deeply experienced woman. "The Supervisor is willing to yield a point--he knows what the New West will bring."

Gregg growled out: "I'm not letting any of my rights slip."

The girl was troubled by the war-light which she saw in the faces of the men about her, and vague memories of the words and stories she had overchanced to hear in her childhood came back to her mind--hints of the drunken orgies of the cowboys who went to the city with cattle, and the terrifying suggestion of their attitude toward all womankind. She set Cavanagh and his chief quite apart from all the others in the room, and at first felt that in young Gregg was another man of education and right living--but in this she was misled.

Lize had confidence enough in the ranger to throw in another malicious word. "Ross, old Bullfrog came down here to chase you up a tree--so he said. Did he do it?"

Gregg looked ugly. "I'm not done with this business."

She turned to Ross. "Don't let him scare you--his beller is a whole lot worse than his bite."

This provoked another laugh, and Gregg was furious--all the more so that his son joined in. "I'll have your head, Mr. Supervisor; I'll carry my fight to the Secretary."

"Very well," returned Redfield, "carry it to the President if you wish. I simply repeat that your sheep must correspond to your permit, and if you don't send up and remove the extra number I will do it myself. I don't make the rules of the department. My job is to carry them out."

By this time every person in the room was tense with interest. They all knew Gregg and his imperious methods. He was famous for saying once (when in his cup): "I always thought sheepmen were blankety blank sons of guns, and now I'm one of 'em I know they are." Some of the cattle-men in the room had suffered from his greed, and while they were not partisans of the Supervisor they were glad to see him face his opponent fearlessly.

Lize delivered a parting blow. "Bullfrog, you and me are old-timers. We're on the losing side. We belong to the 'good old days' when the Fork was 'a man's town,' and to be 'shot up' once a week kept us in news. But them times are past. You can't run the range that way any more. Why, man, you'll have to buy and fence your own pasture in a few years more, or else pay rent same as I do. You stockmen kick like steers over paying a few old cents a head for five months' range; you'll be mighty glad to pay a dollar one o' these days. Take your medicine--that's my advice." And she went back to her cash-drawer.

Redfield's voice was cuttingly contemptuous as he said quite calmly: "You're all kinds of asses, you sheepmen. You ought to pay the fee for your cattle with secret joy. So long as you can get your stock pastured (and in effect guarded) by the Government from June to November for twenty cents, or even fifty cents, per head you're in luck. Mrs. Wetherford is right: we've all been educated in a bad school. Uncle Sam has been too bloomin' lazy to keep any supervision over his public lands. He's permitted us grass pirates to fight and lynch and burn one another on the high range (to which neither of us had any right), holding back the real user of the land--the farmer. We've played the part of selfish and greedy gluttons so long that we fancy our privileges have turned into rights. Having grown rich on free range, you're now fighting the Forest Service because it is disposed to make you pay for what has been a gratuity. I'm a hog, Gregg, but I'm not a fool. I see the course of empire, and I'm getting into line."

Gregg was silenced, but not convinced. "It's a long lane that has no turn," he growled.

Redfield resumed, in impersonal heat. "The cow-man was conceived in anarchy and educated in murder. Whatever romantic notions I may have had of the plains twenty-five years ago, they are lost to me now. The free-range stock-owner has no country and no God; nothing but a range that isn't his, and damned bad manners--begging pardon, Miss Wetherford. The sooner he dies the better for the State. He's a dirty, wasteful sloven, content to eat canned beans and drink canned milk in his rotten bad coffee; and nobody but an old crank like myself has the grace to stand up and tell the truth about him."

Cavanagh smiled. "And you wouldn't, if you weren't a man of independent means, and known to be one of the most experienced cow-punchers in the county. I've no fight with men like Gregg; all is they've got to conform to the rules of the service."

Gregg burst out: "You think you're the whole United States army! Who gives you all the authority?"

"Congress and the President."