Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/136

128 "Then Alice " And they laughed across the fire. It had become quite easy to laugh at simple, wholesome pleasantries. Yet there was no familiarity here. Alice had told the truth: last names take time; and time, in the West, is precious. Names were designations of people, rather than people the representatives of names. Names didn't matter and people did.

"Dan called me Alice too," she went on, suddenly remembering to remind Hugh that he was in the same class, as far as privileges went, with his predecessors. "My father lives down at a place called Horse Creek—and unlike many sheepmen in the West, his whole capital is tied up in this one flock. He isn't a big sheepman—only a little one. That is what makes it so important that we win.

"He bought the stock from an old friend to whom he had loaned everything he had—and it was either take the sheep or lose everything. He wasn't an experienced sheepman. Otherwise he wouldn't have come here—where Landy Fargo and his gang control everything. You see, Hugh, they are cattlemen—managers—and they're part owners, too—for a number of rich men in the East. For years and years they've had everything their own way in regard to the range.

"Maybe, if you're an Eastern man, you don't understand about range. The Western stock business depends on having acres and acres of