the fine range land, on which fattened three thousand head of
cattle, carrying the Wade brand, the Double Arrow. Barely an hour
before, the owner had surveyed the scene with more than satisfaction,
exulting in the promise of prosperity it seemed to convey. Now all his
business future was threatened by the coming of the sheep.

After putting his horse in the corral, the ranch owner turned toward the
house. As he walked slowly up the hill, he made a fine figure of a man;
tall, straight, and bronzed like an Indian. His countenance in repose
was frank and cheerful, and he walked with the free, swinging stride of
an out-door man in full enjoyment of bodily health and vigor. Entering
the cabin by the open door, he passed through to the rear where a
rattling of pots and pans and an appetizing smell of frying bacon told
that supper was in progress.

Bill Santry was standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling
grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The
face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was
seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of
years of exposure to all kinds of weather.

"Hello, Gordon!" he exclaimed. His pale blue eyes showed like pin points
under the shaggy, gray brows. "You're back early, just in time for me to
remark that if we don't get a pot-wrastler for this here outfit pretty
durn quick, the boys'll be cookin' their own chuck. I'm blamed if I'll
herd this stove much longer."

Wade smiled as he passed into the adjoining room to remove his spurs and
chaps. "There's a Chinese coming up from town to-morrow," he said.

Santry peered across the stove to watch him as he moved about his room.
The week before, a large picture of an extremely beautiful girl, which
she had sent to Wade and which at first he had seemed to consider his
most precious ornament, had fallen face downward on the table. Santry
was curious to see how long it would be before Wade would set it up
again, and he chuckled to himself when he saw that no move was made to
do so. Wade had presented Santry to the girl some months before, when
the two men were on a cattle-selling trip to Chicago, and the old
plainsman had not cared for her, although he had recognized her beauty
and knew that she was wealthy in her own right, and moreover was the
only child of a famous United States Senator.

"There's thunder to pay over in the valley, Bill." Wade had produc