Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
"It is government land," Wade quietly acknowledged, "but you have no right on it. I control this range, I've paid for it, and unless you move within the next twelve hours you'll be arrested for trespass." The sheepman's sullen face darkened with anger. "Who'll do it? The sheriff won't, and I'm not afeerd of you cattlemen. My sheep must eat as well as your cattle, and I got a good right here.
She told him so, as one friend to another, pledging him to secrecy, showing a little ring on a white ribbon about her neck. Her Corydon was a sheepman's son who lived beyond the Sullivan ranch, and could dance like a butterfly and sing songs to the banjo in a way to melt the heart of any maid. So Mary said, but in her own way, with blushes, and wide, serious eyes.
Welton rose, staring at his visitor. "Do you mean to tell me," he cried at last, "that a man hasn't got a right to get into his own land? That they can keep a man out of his own land?" "Da's right," nodded the Frenchman. "But you've been in here for ten years or so to my knowledge." Abruptly the sheepman's calm fell from him. He became wildly excited.
"You're the man I was looking for," said Bob. "I see you got your sheep in all right. Have any trouble?" The sheepman's teeth flashed. "Not'tall," he replied. "I snik in ver' easy up by Beeg Rock." At the mill, Bob, while luxuriously splashing the ice cold water on his face and throat, took time to call to Welton in the next room. "Saw your sheep man," he proffered.
For perhaps three days the sheepman's life hung in the balance, after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life began to tell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a notch, and he was now sleeping wholesomely a good part of his time.
Even if he should remember on the way home, or get out his Bible on his arrival and look the story up, there would be nothing of a parallel between the case of Jacob and that of John Mackenzie to worry his sheepman's head. For though Jacob served his seven years for Rachel, which "seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her," he, John Mackenzie, was not serving Tim Sullivan for Joan.
In the meantime Toomey had brought the velvet-mouthed horse to its haunches in front of the laundry where he tossed a bundle into the sheepman's arms, saying casually; "Take that inside, my man." Without a change of expression, Mormon Joe caught it, rolled it compactly and kicked it over the horse's back into the street. "There's no brass buttons sewed on my coat take it yourself!"
The eyes of the two men clashed, the sheepman's stern and unyielding, his cousin's lit with the devil of triumph. But out of the faces of both men looked the inevitable conflict, the declaration of war that never ends till death. "I've been a heap anxious about y'u couldn't sleep for worrying.
"Them Hall boys ought to be men enough not to do me a trick like that after the way I've give in to them on this side of the range," he said. Then to Mackenzie, sharply: "It wouldn't 'a' happened if you hadn't took Hector's guns away from him that time. A sheepman's got no right to be fightin' around on the range.
"I'll be out here on the range," she said, shaking her determined head, "a sheepman's got to stick with his flock through all kinds of weather. If I run home for the winter I'll have to hire a herder, and that would eat my profits up; I'd never get away from here." "Maybe by the time you've got enough money to carry out your plans, Joan, you'll not want to leave."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking