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Updated: May 9, 2025
"That's Swope and Co. the Sheepmen's Protective Association coming over to rescue companero." A line of rapidly moving specks proved the truth of his observation, and Creede's shoulders shook with laughter as he noted their killing pace. "I tumbled to the idee the minute I set eyes on that cow's horn," he said. "It's like this.
"I don't know," replied Hardy politely. "Well, supposen I dropped a stick of dynamite under you," burst out Swope hoarsely, "would you jump? Speak up, man, you know what I'm talking about. You don't think you can stand off the whole Sheepmen's Protective Association, do you?
Old Hicks refused to take the protection that the wagon offered. He stood his ground, stick held firmly in both hands, awaiting a chance to rap the boy or the goat when they next passed. His opportunity came soon. He had been baking pies for the sheepmen's supper and these he had placed on the tail board of the wagon, which he had removed and laid upon a frame made of sticks stuck into the ground.
For Mart also figured on the effect on the sheepmen's nerve when they found their herds gone, and their water from the tank giving out. Under cover of darkness Mart led about fifteen men around the hill, which they skirted, and, giving the ranch house a wide berth, made their way toward the mouth of the canyon. There was only one thing to guide them on their course.
"All sheepmen's onery, ma'am, they tell me," said Taterleg, a cowman now from core to rind, and loyal to his calling accordingly. "I don't know about the rest of them, but Walleye Bostian is a mighty mean sheepman. Well, I know I got a shot at him once that he'll remember." "You did?" Taterleg's face was as bright as a dishpan with admiration.
To Lee Virginia all this talk of "the curse of democracy" and "the decay of empire" was unexciting, but when Cavanagh told of the sheepmen's advance across the dead-line on Deer Creek, and of the threats of the cattle-owners, she was better able to follow the discussion. "We're not," retorted Redfield; "we're merely defending them against those who would monopolize them.
"Well," he said, "I can't figure it out maybe you wouldn't mind telling me how it happened." "Why hell, man," burst out the sheepman, "it's as plain as the nose on your face I didn't belong to the Association. All these big sheepmen that drive north and south belong to the Sheepmen's Protective Association, and they stand in with each other, but we little fellows up in 'Pache County was nobody.
Well, then, will ye abide by the law and give us our legal rights or will ye fight like a dam' fool and git sent to Yuma for your pains? That's what I want to know, and when you talk to me you talk to the whole Sheepmen's Association, with money enough in its treasury to send up every cowman in the Four Peaks country! What I want to know is this will you fight?" "I might," answered Hardy quietly.
When that signal rose up against the sky whether it was a smoke by day or a fire by night every man was to quit his post and ride to harry the first herd. Wherever or however it came in, that herd was to be destroyed, not by violence nor by any overt act, but by the sheepmen's own methods strategy and stealth. For once there was no loose joint in the cordon of the cowmen's defence.
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