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to Bent’s Ford and warn Cousin Red not to wait his herd for us,’ Dusty remarked more to himself than the others. He turned to Lasalle. ‘Take it kind if you’d let us stay on and rest our horses. We’ll work for our food and bed.’
    A gasp left Freda’s lips. She could hardly believe her ears and felt like singing aloud in joy. After seeing the way Dusty, Mark and the Kid handled the eight Double K hard-cases and made them back off, she did not doubt but that the ranch would be safe in their hands.
    ‘We haven’t much food,’ she said, ‘but the way you told it none of you do much work either.’
    From the grins on three faces Freda knew she had said the right thing. Her reply showed them she had the right spirit and knew cowhand feelings. Her father did not take the same lighthearted view.
    ‘Just a moment, Freda,’ he put in. ‘These gentlemen are welcome to stay over and rest their horses, but we won’t expect them to work for their food.’
    ‘Why not?’ asked Dusty. ‘The way this pair eat they need work, or they’ll run to hawg-fat and be good for nothing when I get them back to home.’
    ‘But — but—!’
    ‘Shucks, give it a whirl, sir,’ interruped Dusty. ‘Mark here’s good for heavy lifting which don’t call for brains. Lon might not know a buffalo bull from a muley steer, but he’s better than fair at toting wood for the cook.’
    ‘And how about you?’ asked Freda. What do you do?’
    ‘As little as he can get away with,’ Mark answered.
    The girl laughed and turned to her father. ‘Papa, this is Captain Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid.’
    It took Lasalle a full minute to reconcile Dusty’s appearance with his Civil War record, or his peacetime prominence. Then Lasalle saw the latent power of the small man, recognized it as an old soldier could always recognize a born leader of men. His daughter was not a victim of cowhand humour. This small man was really Dusty Fog. He still did not know what he could say or do for the best.
    Then his daughter took the matter out of his hands, made a decision on her own and showed him that she was a child no more.
    ‘I’ll show you where the hands bunked,’ she said. ‘You can move your gear in and then I’ll find you some work.’
    ‘I’m beginning not to like this here job already,’ the Kid told Dusty in an audible whisper; ‘This gal sounds too much like you and I’m all for a day’s work — providing it’s spread out over three days.’
    With that the three cowhands started to follow Freda, leaving her father with his mouth hanging open, not knowing how things came to happen. Then he recalled a piece of news overheard in town, something which might interest the three cowhands.
    ‘Mallick’s started wiring off their range. He’s already fenced off the narrows all the way along their two mile length from the badlands down to where they open out on to his range again. He doesn’t allow any trail herds to cross the Double K.’
    ‘He’s done what?’
    Lasalle took a pace backwards before the concentrated fury in Dusty Fog’s voice as the small Texan turned back towards him. Mark and the Kid had turned also and they no longer smiled or looked friendly.
    ‘Put wire across the trail, clear across the narrows. Says any trail herd which wants to make the market has to swing one way or the other round his range.’
    The girl looked from her father to the three cowhands. She knew cowhands hated barbed wire and fences of any kind. She knew all the range arguments about wire; that cattle ripped themselves open on the spikes; that a man might ride into such a fence during the night hours and not see it until too late. She also knew the hate went deeper than that. From the Mississippi to the Pacific a man could move or let his cattle graze without being fenced in. He could ride where he wished and had no need to fear crossing another man’s land as long as he obeyed the un-written rules of the range. Through all that