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 table for papers and tobacco. He divined his visitor would reveal himself shortly as bearer of some new message of strategy in the war of the range, something direct from headquarters. The first faint stirrings of dislike of his visitor began to prick under the alertness of the range inspector; Original resented an indefinable quality in Von Tromp's manner and voice, a something which seemed to set him in the status of a hired hand about to take his day's orders.

"I may say to start with that—ah—our people are greatly alarmed at the way things are going here in the Big Country," the voice of Von Tromp purled on. "They thought when they put the board-of-live-stock-commissioners thing through the legislature and had you appointed inspector for this county the wholesale rustling of cattle would cease. They relied upon you to exercise—um—a little moral suasion upon the sheepmen to keep them back from the cattle lands. Unfortunately, Blunt, neither of those hopes has been realized. Last fiscal year our people had to mark more than $150,000 off their accounts to the credit of cattle thieves. To-day, because of the invasion of the sheep and the taking up of claims by