"Trouble, Mary. I want to talk to you."

"I'm always ready to listen, Daddy," she replied. "I wish you wouldn't worry so. That's all you've done since we left Montana."

"I know; but I can't help it," he responded, smiling faintly. "But I don't care much as long as I've got you to talk it over with. Yo're like yore mother that way, Mary; she allus made things easy, somehow. An' she knew more'n most women do about things."

"Yo're my own Daddy," she replied affectionately. "Now tell me all about it."

"Well," he began, sitting on the table, "I'm being cheated out of my rights. I find lines where none exist. I'm hemmed in from water, th' best grazing is held from me, my cows are driven helter-skelter, my pride hurt, an' my men mocked. When I say I must have water I'm told to go to th' river for it, twenty miles from my main range, an' lined with quicksands; an' yet there is water close to me, water enough for double th' number of cows of both ranches! It is good, clean water, unfailing an' over a firm bottom, flowing through thirty miles of th' best grass valley in this whole sun-cursed section. Two hundred miles in any direction won't show another as good. An' yet, I dassn't set my foot in it—I can't drive a cow across that line!"

He paused and then continued: "I'm good an' sick of it all. I ain't going to swaller it no longer, not a day. Peace is all right, but not at th' price I'm paying! I'd ruther die fighting for what's mine than put up with what I have since I came down here."

"What are you going to do?" she asked quietly.

"I'm going to have a force on that line by to-morrow night!" he cried, gradually working himself into a temper. "I'm going to hold them hills, an' th' springs at th' bottom of 'em. I'm going to use that valley an' I'll fight until th' last man goes under!"

"Don't say that, Daddy," she quickly objected. "There ain't no line worth yore life. What good will it do you when yo're dead? You can get along without it if it comes to that. An' what'll happen to me if you get killed?"

"No, girl," he replied. "You've held me back too long. I should 'a struck in th' beginning, before they got so set. It would 'a been easier then. I don't like range wars any more'n anybody, but it's come, an' I've got to hold up my end—an' my head!"

"But th' agreement?" she queried, fearful for his safety. She loved her father with all her heart, for he had been more than a father to her; he had always confided in her and weighed her judgment; they had been companions since her mother died, which was almost beyond her memory; and now he would risk his life in a range war, a vindictive, unmerciful conflict which usually died out when the last opponent died—and perhaps he was in the wrong. She knew the fighting ability of that shaggy, tight-lipped breed of men that mocked Death with derisive, profane words, who jibed whether in mêlée or duel with as light hearts as if engaged in nothing more dangerous than dancing. And she had heard, even in Montana, of the fighting qualities of the outfit that rode range for the Bar-20. If they must be fought, then let it be for the right principles and not otherwise. And there was Hopalong!—she knew in her heart that she loved him, and feared it and fought it, but it was true; and he was the active leader of his outfit, the man who was almost the foreman, and who would be in the thickest of the fighting. She didn't purpose to have him killed if he was in the right, or in the wrong, either.