“It’s possible,” Scott said doubtfully, “but I don’t believe it. He was with Jed Clark the day I bought the horse, and I know Jed had no idea of selling him.”
Heth had his own reasons for not pushing the matter and a ring at the ’phone interrupted any further talk on the subject.
It was the ranger. He ordered Scott to find how much stock the ranchers would have for free use and have Heth fix up the chute ready for the counting of the sheep. Scott again relayed the orders to Heth.
“I suppose you know all about this business, but it is pretty much Greek to me. How do you find out about the free use stock?” The day before Scott would never have asked Heth this question, but this morning he felt more friendly, and he knew it was the sensible thing to do.
“Nothing to it,” Heth replied, “except a long ride. Just go to see each one, ask him how many head he is going to run on the forest this year and give him a permit if he is under the limit. There are some forms here for it.”
Heth produced the forms and Scott looked them over carefully.
“Looks simple enough. If he has too many I suppose I give him a permit for the limit and charge him for the rest.”
“No, you give him a permit for the limit and report the overrun to the ranger. He attends to that.”
“Is there a list of these settlers?” Scott asked.
“No, but I can tell you who they all are and they live in a string in the valley along the edge of the forest. The ones farther out are the big fellows and we do not have to monkey with them. They get theirs at the super’s office.”
With this information in hand Scott saddled up Jed, who was getting very much attached to his kind master, and started down the trail to the valley. Heth rode with him as far as the sheep chute, and pointed out the sheep trails he had posted with new signs the day before. “You see,” he explained, “you can’t let them wander all over or they would never get where they were going. They would be grazing on somebody else’s range all summer. So we post these trails which they have to follow and we limit the time they can have to get to their own range. Each man has a range allotted to him and has to stay on it.”
“Do they all come in at the same time?” Scott asked. He wanted to get all the information he could on it before he came in contact with the ranchers themselves. Heth already knew he was green but he did not want the ranchers to find it out.