r snoozers. This range you've got your sheep on is mine.
I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a
sheep inside of it when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a
week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men
over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if
I find you here at the same time this is what you'll get."

King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnacion. He sighed many
times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the
old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of
Free Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating
upon his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing;
the price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the
storekeeper at Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies,
was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut
him off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him
by the terrible King James was a crusher.

When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Galloway
lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool sacks,
fingering his guitar.

"Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called, cheerfully. "You rolled in
early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish Fandango
to-day. I just about got it. Here's how she goes--listen."

"That's fine, that's mighty fine," said old man Ellison, sitting on
the kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. "I
reckon you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far
as the roads are cut out."

"Oh, I don't know," said Sam, reflectively. "But I certainly do get
there on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats
about as well as any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle
Ben--ain't you feeling right well this evening?"

"Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out,
let's have that Mexican piece that starts off with: '_Huile, huile,
palomita_.' It seems that that song always kind of soothes and
comforts me after I've been riding far or anything bothers me."

"Why, _seguramente, senor_," said Sam. "I'll hit her up for you as
often as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, you want
to jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're just a
little bit strong."

A man sixty-