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 infernal drain on my herd for three years I could clean up and pay off every stockholder dollar for dollar—I never hope to be able to do anything more now. Yes, I'll do damned well if I come out with clean hands!"

"And the sheriffs are not always straight? That makes it harder."

"Oh, they round a few of them up sometimes, and once in a while we do get a fairly honest man in office in some of the counties around here. But even at that, the combination they have to fight is too big. It's international, it laps over the Canadian line north, and Mexico on the south. A sheriff is a mighty little man to buck a thing like that."

"Are your neighbors standing losses in proportion to yours?" Barrett inquired, hardly willing yet to credit his ears in the report of this amazing robbery.

"No, I've suffered heavier than any of them, five or ten to one. That's due to the peculiar isolation of this range, cut off on two sides by hills, peculiarly favorable to rustlers. There's another trap up the river a few miles below the military post, a settlement of those outcast parasites that always hang on the flanks of military reservations. My men fall into the lure of those joints too often, led away by the decoys that are a part of the system. A gang of them will stay away on a bender up there for days at a time, frequently before we know their cattle are roaming unprotected. I've fired them so often I've had a procession of cowpunchers trailin' across this ranch like a Frontier Day parade, but it don't do any good. There's a lot to contend with here that an outsider never would dream of,