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Updated: June 23, 2025
Say, my heart nigh breaks every time I peek into his poor sad an' troubled face. Jeff's just beating his soul dead. And if the Obar gets wrong, it'll sure be the end of everything for him. It mustn't, Daddy. Things mustn't go wrong. 'Deed they mustn't. It's up to us. You must show me how, Daddy. You're wise to it all. You're strong. You know. Show me. Put me wise, an' I'll take Jeff's place."
It's the 'hands' on our range. Sure. Ther's some lousy guy on the Obar working in with the gang. Cowpunchers are a mongrel lot anyway. Ther' ain't one but 'ud souse the sacrament wine ef the passon wa'an't lookin' on. I guess we'll need to chase up the penitentiary re-cord of every blamed thief on our pay-roll. Maybe the cinch we're lookin' fer lies that way." "It's curious." "Curious?
For a moment her courage well-nigh failed her. Jeff was standing with his back turned toward the sunset. The ranchman was no longer there. He had gone to the barn to order a fresh saddle horse for the master of the Obar. Apparently Jeff had turned to repass into the house.
Jeff shook his head, and smiled in the confidence of feelings. "Don't ever talk that way. Don't ever think like that," he urged her. Then, as their horses ambled side by side up the last gentle incline before they dropped down to the great plain of the Rainbow Hill Valley, which was the setting of the Obar Ranch, he drew nearer and reached out one arm and gently encircled her waist.
"System," Bud declared sharply. "They're takin' a steady toll of us, an' other folks in the district. We trailed 'em to the hills, an' lost 'em. Say, if we don't handle 'em it means " "Something like ruin for the Obar." Jeff's manner was shorn of any equivocation. He spoke with almost ruthless force, but the coldness of tone was incomparable with the steely light in his blue eyes.
The men against whom it was directed received it with deliberate but secretly expressed contempt. Nor did Chance serve the masters of the Obar, as four years before She had served Dug McFarlane. Nor was the failure due to lack of effort. Bud left no stone unturned. And Jeff well, Jeff did all a man could. The hills were scoured, and the deeps and hidden hollows of the greater foothills.
Numberless calves answered their mothers' calls, and hung to their sides in panic at the commotion in the midst of which they found themselves. Already hundreds of them had endured the terrors of the searing irons which left them indelibly marked as the property of the great Obar Ranch, while hundreds more were awaiting the same process. And the irons and forges were kept going all day.
Did that mean raiding her husband's stock and endeavoring so to ruin the Obar? It looked like it. It would account for what was being done. But no. That might be part of what was contained in the threat. But not all. The only way we know! The only way this class of man understood paying off a score was different from that. With these men it was always a life for a life. Whose? Hers? It might be.
He suddenly flung out one arm, pointing ahead where the great Obar plains rolled away toward the hills below them. "That's the ranch. There. That one there is Bud's homestead, and the other to the right's your our home. Say, it's good to see mighty good!" Nan gazed upon the result of her labors and decided that it was good. Bud was observing her in his unobtrusive way.
It was a mere cattle station, neither better nor worse than several others lying on the outskirts of the Obar territory. Yet it was important that it headed a valley running north and south amongst the hills, where the grass was sweet, and rich, and fattening, one of those surprise natural pastures which the hills love to yield occasionally to those who seek out their wealth.
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