Still, their day-to-day living was being bought by cattle, and now someone was driving their cattle off the best range, making them climb up into the hills with their sparse grass, where the cattle fed on brush that put no weight on them at all. Climbing through that rugged country, looking for feed, the cattle were likely to lose weight rather than gain it.

Now that he was an official deputy of the US Forest Service, Tom meant to put an end to Cleghorne's dominance of the Aravaipa Canyon area. No rich bastard had the right to keep Power cattle off the sweet grass.

He took provisions for four or five days, a week if he took it easy and slow, and he headed down out of the Galiuros for Aravaipa to watch over the cattle. He had a lever-action Winchester .30–30 and a hundred rounds of ammunition. In his belt he had a Smith and Wesson .38 six-shooter, so worn in the action that he didn't dare carry it loaded.

He stayed in the hills above the creek, watching the cattle graze the grass and broadleaf weeds of the creekside for two days and nights, eating only enough to keep him strong, and heading upcreek to fill his water bag in a small, protected pool where the cattle couldn't crap in it. He thought about how it was to be one of the little guys. None of the other ranchers were camped out watching their cattle, only him. And he was doing it because no one was afraid of him, no one feared insulting him or stealing from him. And that was the way it was. If you had no money, you had no respect. People thought poor was its own fault. Famine, flood, and disease meant nothing for the rich because their money would float them through those times. Plagues were the province of the poor, whose cattle starved or bloated and died or got run off by fire. The poor couldn't protect themselves against what went wrong, and that was their own damned fault.

The Power family would be different, though, if trouble would let them be for a while. Their land on Rattlesnake Creek was fine land, and there was gold there. They knew that. They couldn't tell how much, but there was gold. They had seen flake, had sluiced it, and had taken small bottles of it to town and sold it. And there was more than just flake. Folks had known for years that the Galiuros were good gold mountains. It was true that, so far, none of the mines had amounted to much. But there had to be big veins of ore no one had found yet. It was rough and remote country that didn't give up its treasures easily. It was good country for the Powers because they were as hard and rough as the mountains.