've had the best of you all round, dad.
You'd better make that two weeks on bread and water."

Wallace Snaith gathered his forces and retreated from the field of
battle. A man on a spent horse met him at his own gate as he dismounted.
He handed the cattleman a note.

On the sheet of dirty paper was written:

The birds you want are nesting in a dugout on the river four miles below
town. You got to hurry or they'll be flown.

J.Y.

Snaith read the note, tore it in half, and tossed the pieces away. He
turned to the messenger.

"Tell Joe he's just a few hours late. His news isn't news any more."

Chapter XVII

"Peg-Leg" Warren

Webb drove his cattle up the river, the Staked Plains on his right. The
herd was a little gaunt from the long journey and he took the last part
of the trek in easy stages. Since he had been awarded the contract for
beeves at the Fort, by Department orders the old receiving agent had been
transferred. The new appointee was a brother-in-law of McRobert and the
owner of the Flying V Y did not want to leave any loophole for rejection
of the steers.

With the clean blood of sturdy youth in him Clanton recovered rapidly
from the shoulder wound. In order to rest him as much as possible,
Webb put him in charge of the calf wagon which followed the drag and
picked up any wobbly-legged bawlers dropped on the trail. During the
trip Jim discovered for himself the truth of what Billie had said,
that the settlers with small ranches were lined up as allies of the
Snaith-McRobert faction. These men, owners of small bunches of cows,
claimed that Webb and the other big drovers rounded up their cattle in
the drive, ran the road brand of the traveling outfit on these strays,
and sold them as their own. The story of the drovers was different.
They charged that these "nesters" were practically rustlers preying upon
larger interests passing through the country to the Indian reservations.
Year by year the feeling had grown more bitter, That Snaith and McRobert
backed the river settlers was an open secret. A night herder had been
shot from the mesquite not a month before. The blame had been laid upon a
band of bronco Mescaleros, but the story was whispered that a "bad
man" in the employ of the Lazy S M people, a man known as "Mysterious
Pete Champa," boasted later while drunk that he had fired the shot.

Jim had heard a good deal about this Mysterious Pete. He was a killer of
the most deadly kind because