All the hands were at table when Utah Blaine walked in and seated himself.  He felt like hell and didn't care who knew.  He hated checking over books and that was what he had been doing for half the night.  The first thing, of course, was to find out just what it was he was managing, and he discovered it was plenty.

Thirty thousand head, Joe Neal had said.  Well, the ranch would carry more, and some of those were ready to sell.  It was time the ranch was worked over but good.  There was water and there was grass.  He considered that with a cold, clear brain and liked what he decided.  It was time some new elements were injected into this game.

Coker had stated it clearly the night before, and he decided he liked Coker.  Also, there had been that talk with Tom Kelsey.  Mary Blake wanted to talk to him, but she had little to offer.  Kelsey had said she had two loyal hands.  Still, that made four of them if they worked together, and Kelsey, while not as salty as Rip Coker, was a solid man.  The sort that would have staving power.  He would talk to Mary Blake.

Lud Fuller was there, his big jaw swinging up and down as he chomped his food.  "Lud," Blaine said, "there's a lot to be done on this outfit.  Take four men and head for Squaw Peak.  There will be some of our stuff up there.  I want everything wearing our brand thrown back across the river."

Fuller started to object angrily.  Squaw Peak?  Why, that was away north!  There would be no chance for him to organize any vigilante meeting up there!  He started to object, but the logic of the move appealed to him.

Those nesters were always cutting out 46 stock and butchering it.

"You givin' up that range?" he looked up from his plate.

"I'm given' up nothing.  From what I hear Ortmann an' his boys up there are makin' mighty free with our stock.  Well, we'll throw our beef back across the river until we get a chance to clean them out of there."

All eyes were on him.  "We'll clean them out," he said, "or make believers of them."

"That's a sizeable job," the speaker was a long-geared man with sparse red hair.  "They'll fight."

"I've tackled sizeable jobs before," Blaine said shortly, "and they fought."

There was no answer to that for they all knew the story of the mining town of Alta where three marshals had lasted a day each, and then Utah Blaine rode in and took the job.  Four men had died the first week he was on the job.  The leader of the bad ones going first, on the first night.  Twenty-two men had been jailed that night, and two had gone to the one-room hospital with cracked skulls.

Alta, where there had been a killing every night, and where sixty-two men had been buried in Boot Hill before one townsman died of natural causes.  The town where there were seven thousand belted men headed straight for the doors of Hell, and every one of them packing a gun.  Two thousand miners and five thousand to rob them - and Blaine had tamed the town.  It was there they started calling him Utah.

"Like I said," he continued, "take your men and move up there.  Work well back up in all the draws.  No stock but our own, but start it for the river.  Nobody works alone, work two or three together and hit both heads of Chasm Creek.  Check the head of Gap mighty careful because I've an idea when they take our beef it goes over from Gap into Chalktank.  Then work south.  It will be slow, but throw the beef back over the river."

"You aim to talk to Ortmann?" Red asked.

"When I'm ready."