th them, but Mart was made to suffer,
and came to think himself a victim.
Out in the barren waste of the Chinook Country, lonely and gloomy, Mart
had planned vengeance. But against whom? No one man could fight the
Government. Failure was sure to come, and it meant death or
worse--further imprisonment. In time Mart had come to regard all
humanity as his enemy. Thus does crime and solitude twist the mind of
man. Mart was ripe for a killing. And these men were offering him a
chance.
CHAPTER XV
THE CATTLE-SHEEP WAR
Next morning before dawn a determined and desperate band of men rode
from the Star Circle Ranch, under the leadership of Mart Cooley. Whitey
and Injun were wise enough not to show themselves, Whitey fearing not
only that they would be forbidden to go, but that they would be sent
home. This would be mortifying, to say the least. But if he were not
forbidden--well, we all know the kinds of excuses with which we ease our
consciences.
While this was going on in Whitey's mind, Bill Jordan was sleeping at
the Bar O. But had Bill known whither his joke on Whitey was leading the
boys, it is likely that he would not have slumbered so peacefully.
So they waited until the warlike expedition had disappeared on the
rolling prairie, and then they followed at a distance. And that was
easy, for Injun could have tracked that mass of horses' hoofprints in
his sleep.
Most of the time Injun and Whitey were out of sight of the cattlemen.
So in order to make this story run right along, it is necessary to tell
what happened to the men while the boys were absent, all of which Injun
and Whitey heard about afterwards.
It was well along in the forenoon when in the distance a mass of moving
dots, with moving specks on its outskirts, indicated a flock of sheep,
and spurring their horses to a gallop the men dashed toward it. And I
regret to say that when the flock was reached, the gallop did not end.
The men rode straight through that bleating, panic-stricken mass, on the
edge of which two hysterical collies vainly tried to exert control of
their charges. The cattlemen were looking for the shepherd.
Some distance beyond the flock, or where the flock had been, for the
sheep were now rushing across the plain, was a two-horse, canvas-topped
wagon, with a stove-pipe protruding through the top at the back. For
your sheepherder does not sleep on the ground like the cowboy, but
prefers a sheltering wagon. When the men re
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