as someone has aptly called them, was considered for
the most part as a degenerate, and only fit for target practice. This side
of the matter troubled him not at all, however.

What did worry him was the element of right in the cattlemen's attitude! a
right that was still a wrong. For he had to acknowledge that when sheep
had once fed across a range, that range was ruined for cattle for the
period of at least a year.

This was due to the fact that the sheep, cropping into the very roots of
the gray grass itself, destroyed it. Moreover, the animals on their slow
marches, herded so close together that they left an offensive trail rather
than follow which the cattle would stand and starve.

On the other hand, the range was free and the sheep had as much right to
graze there as the cattle, a fact that the cattlemen, with all their
strict code of justice, refused to recognize.

Larkin knew that he had come to the parting of the ways at the Bar T
ranch.

Old Beef Bissell was what was known at that time as a cattle king. His
thousands of steers, wealth on the hoof, grazed far and wide over the
fenceless prairies. His range riders rarely saw the ranch house for a
month at a time, so great was his assumed territory; his cowboys
outnumbered those of any owner within three hundred miles. Aside from
this, he was the head of a cattlemen's association that had banded
together against rustlers and other invaders of the range.

Larkin returned to the conversation.

"Try to see it from my standpoint," he said to Bissell. "If you had gone
in for sheep as I have--"

"I wouldn't go in for 'em," interrupted the other contemptuously, and
Stelton grunted.

"As you like about that. Every gopher to his own hole," remarked Bud. "But
if you had, and I guess you would if you thought there was more money in
it, you would certainly insist on your rights on the range, wouldn't you?"

"I might try."

"And if you tried you'd be pretty sure to succeed, I imagine."

"It's likely; I allow as how I'm a pretty good hand at succeedin'."

"Well, so am I. I haven't got very far yet, but I am on my way. I didn't
come out here to make a failure of things, and I don't intend to. Now, all
I want is to run my sheep north on to the Montana range where my ranch
is."

"How many are there?" This from Stelton.

"Five flocks of about two thousand each."

Bissell snorted and turned in his chair.

"I won't allow it, young man, an' that's all I've got t