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expanse of land there were few if any fences and the free-roaming cowhands wanted to see it stay that way.
    ‘How about the herds already moving north?’ Mark asked quietly. ‘This’s the trail Stone Hart uses and he’s already on his way.’
    ‘I think we’d all better go into the house and talk this out,’ Lasalle replied, but some of the tired sag had left his shoulders now and he seemed to be in full command of himself.
    He led the way around the house side and in through the front door. The Kid collected the fallen Army Colt, although Lasalle paid no attention to it, or to the shotgun which the Kid leaned against the door on entering. He waved his guests into chairs and rooted through the side-piece drawers to find a pencil and paper. With these he joined the others at the table and started to make a sketch map of the outline of the Double K. It looked like a rough square, except that up at the north-eastern corner the narrows thrust out to where it joined the badlands. All in all Lasalle drew quite a fair map, showing his own place, the other small ranches and the general lay of the land.
    ‘Did some map-making with the Field Engineers during the War,’ he remarked. ‘This’s the shape of the Lindon Land Grant. We ranch here. This was the Doane place, but they’ve sold out. This’s the Jones place and the last one here is owned by Bill Gibbs. The town’s back here, out beyond the Double K’s south line. If the new owner can buy us out it will make his spread cover a full oblong instead of having the narrows up here.’
    Taking the pencil Dusty marked the line taken by the northbound trail herds. He tapped the narrows with the pencil tip. Freda noticed that he handled the pencil with his left hand, yet he drew his Colt with his right. He must be truly ambidextrous, she thought.
    ‘And he’s run wire down this way,’ Dusty said. ‘From the badlands up that way, right down to where the river starts to curve around and down to form his south line.’
    ‘So I’ve heard. I haven’t been out that way.’
    ‘Which means any drive that comes up is going to have to swing to the west,’ Mark drawled. ‘Or go east and try to run the badlands.’
    Lasalle nodded. ‘Mallick claims the trail herds won’t cross Double K.’
    ‘Which’d mean the drive would have to circle right around their range to the west, lose maybe a week, maybe more’s drive, or cut east and face bad water, poor graze, worse country and the chance of losing half the herd,’ said Mark quietly. ‘I can’t see any trail boss worth his salt doing that.’
    ‘Me neither,’ agreed the Kid. ‘What do we do about it, Dusty?’
    ‘Wait until the Wedge comes up and see what Stone allows to do.’
    ‘Huh!’ grunted the Kid, for once not in agreement with Dusty’s reply. ‘I say let’s head up there to the narrows and haul down that fence.’
    ‘The Double K have twenty men at least on the spread,’ Lasalle put in. ‘They have such law as exists in this neck of the woods. Elben has eight men backing him in Barlock, all being paid by the Double K.’
    ‘Which sounds like a powerful piece of muscle for a man just aiming to run a peaceful cow outfit,’ drawled Dusty. ‘Have you seen this new owner?’
    ‘Nobody has yet, apart from the hard-cases stopping folks crossing their range. They say the new owner hasn’t arrived yet, that he bought the place without even seeing it.’
    ‘So we don’t know if he is behind this wiring the range or not.’
    ‘No, Captain, we don’t. Only it’s not likely Mallick would be doing all this off his own shoulders is it? It’d take nearly four mile of barbed wire to make a double fence along the narrows and that runs to money.’
    Changing hands Dusty started to doodle idly on the paper. This ambidextrous prowess was something he had taught himself as a child, mainly to take attention from his lack of inches. He thought of Englishmen he had known, a few of them and not enough to form any