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Updated: May 2, 2025
The sheep had been destroying the grazing on the west side of the river. There had been bickerings and finally an open declaration of war against David Loring, the old sheep-man of the valley. Corliss wished to avoid friction with David Loring. Their ranches were opposite each other.
It was a long ride, but Sundown's mind was so preoccupied with the preparing of his proposed appeal to the sheep-man that the morning hours and the sunlit miles swept past unnoticed. The dark green of the acacias bordering the hacienda, the twinkling white of the speeding windmill, and the dull brown of the adobes became distinct and separate colors against the far edge of the eastern sky.
"I hope I'll have five hundred like you," he said, scooping it up under his arm. "Yes, I do. You'll have me talking to myself yet. Yes, you will." For a sheep-man to talk to himself is considered a bad sign; but the present hermit had no chance to go farther in this course. The dog, dashing suddenly ahead, stopped at the corner of the shack and growled.
"Here she is. Take a look." The old sheep-man swung out the cylinder and pointed with a gnarled and horny finger. The men closed in and gazed in silence. One of the shells was empty. Loring handed the gun to Shoop. "I'll ask Jack," said the foreman. When he returned to the group he was unusually grave. "Says he plugged a coyote this mornin'." Loring's seamed and weathered face was expressionless.
"If I was a sheep-man now, I'd try an' find time, next shearin' " "My father," growled Neal. "Excuse me," said Calumet with a short laugh, though his eyes shone with a sudden hardness; "I thought it was a " "You're Calumet Marston, I reckon," interrupted the bearded man. "You're an impertinent pup, like your father was. Get his guns!" he commanded gruffly.
He reflected suddenly that Dickie Lang had never so much as intimated that he would be a welcome guest at her home. Well, there was no use dwelling on it now. He had never bothered the girl, and never would. "Bandrist is no ordinary sheep-man," she went on. "And I know it. He's working some kind of a game over there that he doesn't want people to butt in on."
The old sheep-man glanced at the group in front of the saloon and blinked hard. Of the West, he read at a glance the situation. Sundown, Corliss, and Shoop raised their hats as Eleanor Loring bowed. "Beat him by a neck!" said Shoop. "Guess we better fan it, eh, Jack?" "There's no hurry," said Corliss easily.
With this sound ringing in his ears, and daily becoming more and more insufferable from monotony and increase, the sheep-man rides out in the morning among his Mexicans, and returns to camp at night aweary, with haply a couple of little ones abandoned by their mothers in his arms, to be brought up on that pis-aller of infancy, and, alas! occasionally of age, the bottle.
And the mention of sheep led him to remark that there was a small band at the water-hole, uncared-for save by himself. "And he was no sheep-man, but he sure hated to see any critters sufferin' for water, so he had allowed the sheep to drink at the water-hole." Then he paused, anticipating the obvious question to which he made answer: "Yes. The water-hole ranch is me ranch.
The sheep-man who lives about two miles west, under Red Clay butte, told me he seen a fellow in a wolfskin coat, ridin' a pinto bronco, with white eyes, leadin' that pony of mine just two days before; and I hunted round till I hit his trail and then I followed to where I'd reckoned he was headin' for the Short Pine Hills.
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