the opening of this chapter at three o'clock, because that was
the hour at which life began to be manifest at the Bar T ranch after the
stirring events of the night before. Bud Larkin himself, worn out with his
nights and days of vigil, had gone to sleep on his bed almost in the act
of taking his boots off. Vague ideas of escape had coursed through his
mind only to be overtaken and killed by the slumber he had evaded for so
long.

His window faced southwest, and when he awoke it was to find the dazzling
gold of the sun warming his face. For a moment he did not realize where
he was, staring thus into the blinding radiance; but memory is only a few
seconds sleepier than its master, and shortly everything came back to
him.

A sinking sensation came over him as he remembered the wanton slaughter of
his sheep, more because of the helpless agony of the poor dumb brutes than
because of the monetary loss, although the latter was no trifling
consideration, since nearly eight thousand dollars had been wiped out in
less than half an hour.

Added to this sickening sensation was one of dull, choking rage that
Bissell, a man of wealth and certain prominence in the State, should
suggest and pursue a course that the most despised sheep-herder would
never countenance. That, Larkin told himself, showed the real man; the
rough, crude product of a rough and bitter country.

For the slogan of the earlier West was selfishness.

"All this is mine and don't you come a-nigh me!" bawled the cowman when
the nesters or grangers began to make their appearance.

The cowboy himself was the chief exponent of this philosophy. Restraint
was unknown to him--his will was his law, and he tried to make it everyone
else's. When thousands of men have the same idea the result is trouble;
hence the practice of cluttering up one's person with artillery.

The one person for whom the cow-puncher had no respect and for whom the
cow country was no fit abiding place was the man who allowed himself to be
domineered. For that man convict-labor on a coral road would have been
paradise compared to his ordinary existence.

Thus was the West the supreme abode at that time of the selfists or
anarchists who have no thought or consideration outside their own narrow
motives and desires.

Though Bud Larkin could not have analyzed his feelings in words, perhaps,
yet he felt this keenly, and knew that now or never must he take his stand
and keep it. He labored under the