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Updated: May 22, 2025
He swung about and advanced to the stretch of level sand where Swope was standing. "What guarantee do I get," he demanded sharply, "that if I lick you in a fair fight the sheep will go around?" "You lick me!" repeated the sheepman, showing his jagged teeth in a sardonic grin.
It was much like the impression of utter recklessness that Newman gave, only in Yankee Swope's case it was not recklessness, but utter wickedness. An aura of evil seemed to cling about him, he walked about in an atmosphere of black iniquity that was horrifying. Any foremast hand would look after Yankee Swope and say, "There he's sold his soul to the Devil!
He led the way to the weighing scales, where two sweating Mexicans tumbled the eight-foot bags upon the platform, and a burly man with a Scotch turn to his tongue called off the weights defiantly. At his elbow stood two men, the man who had called them and a wool buyer, each keeping tally of the count. Jim Swope glanced quickly up from his work.
I'll bet you forty dollars to the price of a drink that old Bill Johnson has been shootin' up their camps. Will you go me? All right, and I'll make you a little side bet: I'll bet you any money that Jim Swope has lost some sheep!"
For two days Creede rode along the rim of Bronco Mesa that dead line which at last the sheepmen had come to respect, and when at last he sighted Jim Swope coming up from Hidden Water with two men who might be officers of the law he laughed and went to meet them. Year in and year out Jim Swope had been talking law law; now at last they would see this law, and find out what it could do.
Once on this chute, with the strong tug of the canvas wagon-covers behind, there was nothing for the sheep to do but to take the plunge, and as his brawny herders tumbled them head over heels into the deep current Swope and his helpers waded out in a line below, shunting each ewe and wading toward the farther shore.
They spoke of the ship's mystery, of the Captain's lady. She was a character to pique a sailorman's interest, the Lady of the Golden Bough. Her fame was as wide, and much sweeter, than the vessel's. With all their toughs' frankness, the crowd were discussing the lady's puzzling relations with Swope. "Uncommon queer, I calls it," said one chap, who had sailed in the ship.
I was always dreading that Swope would try again some dark night, and with better success. It is so easy to do things in the dark, you see; get a man separated from the watch, beyond the reach of friendly eyes, give him a crack on the head and a boost over the rail, and then what proof, what trace, have you? Just a line in the logbook, "Man lost overboard in the night."
Their orders were to shoot only in self-defence; for a war was the last thing which the Swope brothers wanted, with their entire fortunes at stake, and no show of weapons could daunt the ruthless Grande and Chico. All the morning the cow horns bellowed and blared as, sweating and swinging their hondas, the stern-eyed Americanos rushed band after band away.
Take flour, for instance what does that cost you?" "I don't know," answered Hardy, whose anger was rising under this unwarranted commercial badgering. "Same as with you, I suppose dollar-ninety." "Ah!" exclaimed Swope triumphantly, "and the extra freight on a sack would be fifty cents, wouldn't it a cent a pound, and a fifty-pound sack!
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