wers were up and every bush was radiant with new
growth. The grass crept out in level places, and the flats in the
valley turned green, but the broad expanse of Bronco Mesa still lay
half-barren from paucity of seeds. Where the earth had been torn up
and trampled by the sheep the flood had seized upon both soil and seed
and carried them away, leaving nothing but gravel and broken rocks;
the sheep-trails had turned to trenches, the washes to gulches, the
gulches to ravines; the whole mesa was criss-crossed with tiny gullies
where the water had hurried away--but every tree and bush was in its
glory, clothed from top to bottom in flaunting green. Within a week
the cattle were back on their old ranges, all that were left from
famine and drought. Some there were that died in the midst of plenty,
too weak to regain their strength; others fell sick from overeating
and lost their hard-earned lives; mothers remembered calves that were
lost and bellowed mournfully among the hills. But as rain followed
rain and the grass matured a great peace settled down upon the land;
the cows grew round-bellied and sleepy-eyed, the bulls began to roar
along the ridges, and the Four Peaks cattlemen rode forth from their
mountain valleys to see how their neighbors had fared.

They were a hard-looking bunch of men when they gathered at the Dos S
Ranch to plan for the fall _rodeo_. Heat and the long drought had
lined their faces deep, their hands were worn and crabbed from months
of cutting brush, and upon them all was the sense of bitter defeat.
There would be no branding in the pens that Fall--the spring calves
were all dead; nor was there any use in gathering beef steers that
were sure to run short weight; there was nothing to do, in fact, but
count up their losses and organize against the sheep. It had been a
hard Summer, but it had taught them that they must stand together or
they were lost. There was no one now who talked of waiting for Forest
Reserves, or of diplomacy and peace--every man was for war, and war
from the jump--and Jefferson Creede took the lead.

"Fellers," he said, after each man had had his say, "there's only one
way to stop them sheep, and that is to stop the first band. Never mind
the man--dam' a herder, you can buy one for twenty dollars a
month--_git the sheep_! Now suppose we stompede the first bunch that
comes on our range and scatter 'em to hell--that's _fif-teen thousand
dol-lars gone_! God A'mighty, boys, think of l