. Its only practical outlet was
that guarded by the sheepmen. But a short way up the canyon there was a
spring in the hills, which found its outlet in a narrow stream that
ended in a small waterfall at the edge of a cliff. Mart figured on his
force entering the canyon, stampeding the sheep, and driving them over
this waterfall. It was as simple as it was cruel, but you may have
noticed that it takes clever people to think of simple things, and Mart
Cooley was proving almost as clever with his mind as he was with his
guns. 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. Where the western hills raised their heights
toward the sky, their outline showed darker than the surrounding night.
From this wall of black, Mart's force steered a diagonal course that
would lead to the center of the canyon's mouth. Once in the canyon, out
of range of the house and among the sheep, lanterns and fires would
provide light enough for the men's purpose.

It is not likely that there was an idea of poetic justice in the mind
of Mart Cooley; a thought that in stampeding the sheep he was repaying
the sheepmen in their own coin for stampeding the cattle, repaying them
with the death of the victims added as interest.

The plan seemed to be working out easily--too easily. Then, from one of
the foremost rider's mounts, came the shrill neigh of a horse in pain,
and the thudding of the animal's hoofs as it shied violently, for it had
collided with the barbed wire fence. This was Mart's first intimation
that there was a fence, but he had no time to think that he had been
matched in cleverness by Donald Spellman, for things began to happen.

First came the sound of a cowbell. At intervals along the lower strands
of barbed wire bells had been hung. Next came a volley of shots, from
the hills, which had been sought by the sheepmen under the cover of the
night. They were firing toward the sound of the bells. The firing was
not well-directed, but it was steady and dangerous.

It is doubtful whether the attackers could have cut their way through
the fence, handicapped as they were, but they had no chance to try, for
just then a third thin