kind, a warfare that
he had survived and which had ended in a sort of sullen tolerance of
his presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol,
and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his
acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or
six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer"
wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted
themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep had come to
stay.

The worst that he and his had to expect was a certain coldness toward
himself on the part of the cattle aristocracy, and a measure of
contempt and dislike toward his "Basco" herders on the part of the
rough-riding and gentle-speaking cow hands.

These things troubled him little. He had no near neighbors. To the
north, across the Idaho border, there was none nearer than Sulphur
Falls, where the Serpentine, rushing tumultuously from the mountains,
twisted in its canyon bed and squirmed away to westward and northward
after making a gigantic loop that took it almost to the Line. To the
south, a ranch at Willow Spring, where a stubborn cattleman hung on in
spite of growing barrenness due to the hated sheep, was forty miles
away. To east and west was no one within calling distance.

At Sulphur Falls were two or three "nesters," irrigating land from the
river, a store or two and a road house run by an unsavory holdover of
the old days named "Snake" Murphy. For a hundred and twenty-five miles
to southward was unbroken land. The cattle were mostly gone--though in
days to come they were to return again in some measure. Even the
Esmeralda Mountains were no longer roamed by populous herds. They were
bare and forbidding, except where the timber was heavy, for the sheep
of Brandon and others, rushing in behind the melting snow in the
spring, had cropped the tender young grass before it had a chance to
grow strong.

Brandon's ranch was an idyllic spot, however. His dead wife and, after
her, her daughter, also dead, had given it the touch of feminine
hands. Vines and creepers half hid the dingy house behind a festoon of
green and blossoms. Around it the lush fields of clover were brilliant
and cool in the expanse of brown sultriness. And here, Ike, now
growing old, lived in content with his idolized granddaughter, Marian,
who was about six years old.

Brandon, at peace with the world, awaited the return from the summer
range o