we've got to go around 'em. If the man was a stranger we might do
something, but Jake Pratt don't bluff--besides, boys, I've got worse
news for you."

"What's that?"

"A couple of Mexicans with five thousand sheep crossed Lizard Creek
yesterday."

The boys leaped to their feet, variously crying out: "Oh, come off! It
can't be true."

"It is true--I saw 'em myself," insisted Williams.

"Well, that means war. Does the V. T. outfit know it?"

"I don't think so. We've got to stand together now, or we'll be overrun
with sheep. The truck farmers are a small matter compared to these
cursed greasers."

"I guess we'd better send word up the river, hadn't we?" asked his
partner.

"Yes, we want to let the whole county know it."

Cheyenne County was an enormous expanse of hilly plain, if the two words
may be used together. Low heights of sharp ascent, pyramid-shaped
buttes, and wide benches (cut here and there by small creek valleys)
made up its surface, which, broadly considered, was only the vast,
treeless, slowly-rising eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. At long
distances, on the flat, sandy river, groups of squat and squalid ranch
buildings huddled as if to escape the wind. For years it has been a
superb range for cattle, and up till the coming of the first settlements
on the Cannon Ball, it had been parceled out among a few big firms, who
cut Government timber, dug Government stone, and pastured on Government
grass. When the wolves took a few ponies, the ranchers seized the
opportunity to make furious outcry and bring in the Government troops to
keep the Indians in awe, and so possessed the land in serenity. Nothing
could be more perfect, more commodious.

But for several years before the coming of the Pratts certain other
ominous events were taking place. Over the mountains from the West, or
up the slope from New Mexico, enormous herds of small, greasy sheep
began to appear. They were "walking" for better pasture, and where they
went they destroyed the grasses and poisoned the ground with foul odors.
Cattle and horses would not touch any grass which had been even touched
by these ill-smelling woolly creatures. There had been ill-feeling
between sheepmen and cattlemen from the first, but as water became
scarcer and the range more fully stocked, bitterness developed into
hatred and warfare. Sheep herders were considered outcasts, and of no
social account. To kill one was by some considered a kindness, for it
en