ead as a feeding-ground for cattle.

So little wonder that the cattlemen thought of the sheep as pests or
vermin, and considered their owners as deadly foes, and in turn were
regarded as foes by the sheepmen. The cattlemen were in possession of
most of the ranges, and possession was nine points of the law in a
country in which there was little law, except that of the gun.

CHAPTER XIV

THE STAMPEDE

Along the banks of the Yellowstone, where it wended its snakelike course
to the Missouri, wandered the massive herds of the Star Circle, and
around them rode the cow waddies, the few outriders, keeping their
charges from straying, and ever watchful for the dreaded sheep, which
had of late sprung up like buffalo grass, and, as Buck Milton expressed
it, "in a country that God had made for cows."

And over the range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft
and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever
used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was
a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle
were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to the
applause of thousands. They acted in the dark, if they could, and for
hire, and yet they may have had hearts--but those who hired them surely
had none.

And all unconscious of coming danger the boys rode with the few
herders, or by themselves, near the wandering cattle. The storm had held
off while twilight faded, but now the sky was cloud-curtained, and the
night fell inky black and silent save for sounds from the herd. The soft
thudding of hoofs, the occasional low-voiced note, possibly of a cow to
its young, seemed to blend into a murmur, strange and fascinating to
Whitey, commonplace and tiresome to the men of the range.

Then the storm began to send signals of its approach from air and sky.
First the hushing of the wind, then the pale glares from the distant sky
where the earth's edge joined it, then the rumble of thunder, growing in
volume with the brighter, green flashes of the lightning--all familiar
enough to Whitey, but now giving him a thrill because felt in strange
surroundings. The nervous stirring of the mass of beasts near by added
to the boy's thrill, for a coming storm was never to be taken calmly by
the hulking, helpless brutes.

And when the rush of wind and the crashing of the coming tempest
sounded, and the herders were renewing their watchfulness, an