Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/57

 a drouth next summer that parched up the range and dried up the water holes. Why, the river along here was nothing but a trickle for miles.

"Our loss was woeful that summer, the bones of nine thousand cattle are spread around this range right now from that visitation—you'll see them when you get to riding around. That was a discouraging beginning, but a thing to be expected, although not foreseen in the order of its coming."

"That would be too much to expect of anybody but a prophet," said Barrett, beginning to see hazards in this mighty game that he never had dreamed of being so great.

"A cattleman on the range must gamble against the universe," said Nearing.

"It takes a prince, instead of a baron, to play the game, I think," Barrett said, speaking more to himself than to his host.

Nearing smoked on a little while, saying nothing to this. He sat with his feet on the low railing of the porch, his strong face lifted to the stars, strewn thicker than his cattle ever stood upon his grassy hills.

Presently Nearing went on to tell of minor troubles with sheepmen and homesteaders, or nesters, as they were called in the cattle country, treating these as small pests, more annoying than menacing.

"The boys have kept the sheepmen pretty well on the jump, and we've smoked the nesters out along the river on the Diamond Tail, although others have allowed them to lodge above and below us."

"Smoked them out?" said Barrett.