We can water just so many, and no more; we have to sell our increase every year."
"It looks to me like there ought to be some way to break that man's hold on that country," Rawlins reflected.
"To a man from the outside it may look that way, but put it up to anybody that lives in this State and he'll understand the why and the wherefore of it, as the widder woman said."
"I don't say it's a one-man job, but if all you sheepmen would move together, wipe that fence out of the way and march in, what is there to stop you?"
"Galloway'd have the United States marshal down here with a hundred deputies before you could say scat. It ain't a question of law or who's got the right, but a question of who's got the power and pull. If the United States marshal couldn't handle it, Galloway'd bring the army in. Let me tell you, boy, these sheepmen around here ain't no babies, but they're drivin' thirty-five to fifty miles around that fence to git to the post office at Lost Cabin from this neighborhood, and they've been doin' it a long time, when it's only twelve miles straight acrost. And every section line's dedicated and set aside by law as a public road. Why don't they open a public road straight acrost that land, then? Why don't a iron dog chase a rabbit!"
"I don't question the nerve of you sheepmen in here," Rawlins said, but with mental reservation. "Only I wondered."
"I've shot at men in my time, "and I've been shot at—and maybe hit in a little no-'count place here and
