f Crawling Water."

CHAPTER IV

THE GATHERING STORM

On the north bank of the river, from which it derived its name, the town
of Crawling Water lay sprawled out in the shape of an irregular horn.
Its original settlers had been men of large ideas, and having had plenty
of space at their disposal, they had used it lavishly. The streets,
bordered by dusty, weather-beaten, frame buildings, were as wide as
those of a large city; indeed, in area, the town could compete with many
a metropolis; but there the resemblance ended. Crawling Water was not
fated to become a big city. The fact that the nearest railroad point was
at Sheridan, forty miles away, did away with any ambitions that Crawling
Water might have had to be more than a neighborhood center.

The mixed population was composed of cattlemen, sheep men, cow punchers
and herders, with a sprinkling of gamblers and other riff-raff. Rough,
uncouth, full-blooded men, they were, for the most part; hard working;
decisive in their likes and dislikes; fearing neither God nor man, they
met Life as they found it and faced Death with a laugh. They were the
last of a fast disappearing type, picturesque, but lacking in many of
the attributes which differentiate mankind from the beasts.

Hardly more than a village, Crawling Water was yet a town, and the seat
of such machinery of government as had been established, and
accordingly, Gordon Wade had ridden directly thither after his far from
satisfactory interview with Oscar Jensen. After he had stabled his horse
and seen it fed, he started up the street in the direction of Moran's
office. He was resolved to find out where the agent stood on the sheep
question without any unnecessary delay. Save for a few dogs, sleeping in
the blaze of the noon-day sun, which hung overhead like a ball of fire,
the town seemed deserted.

When Wade entered the office, Moran was seated at his desk, chewing on a
cigar, above which his closely cropped reddish mustache bristled. Like
Senator Rexhill, he was a man of girth and bulk, but his ape-like body
was endowed with a strength which not even his gross life had been able
to wreck, and he was always muscularly fit. Except for the miner's hip
boots, which he wore, he was rather handsomely dressed, and would have
been called tastefully so in the betting ring of a metropolitan
race-track, where his diamond scarf-pin and ring would have been
admired.

"Hello!" he boomed as Wade entered. "Have a ci