And there was something else to occupy the boys' minds.

There seemed to be a vague feeling of unrest at the ranch.

There always had been bad blood between Gil Steele and the workers.

He not only was a hard taskmaster, getting the last ounce of work out of the men, but he was close in money matters, and had all sorts of fines and penalties he imposed when the men were late or neglected their work.

There was continual wrangling and haggling.
With this sort of thing on the surface you will understand that it would be easy to stir up more serious trouble from underneath, and something of the sort was going on.