ss night, the young rancher set out
alone for the sheep camp. He was more than ever concerned over the
outlook, because sleep had brought to his pillow visions of cattle
starving on a denuded range, and of Santry and Race Moran engaged in a
death struggle. Particularly because of the danger of this, he had
insisted upon Santry staying at home. The old plainsman, scarred
veteran of many a frontier brawl, was too quick tempered and too
proficient with his six-shooter to take back-talk from the despised
sheep herders or to bandy words with a man he feared and hated. Wade was
becoming convinced that Moran was responsible for the invasion of the
range, although still at a loss for his reasons. The whole affair was
marked with Moran's handiwork and the silent swiftness of his methods.

This Race Moran was a stranger who had come to Crawling Water some
months before, and for reasons best known to himself, had been trying to
ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have
plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his
advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had
opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled
in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease
land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not
prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various
parts of the surrounding country and some of these flocks to overflow
into Crawling Water Valley. Moran denied, at first, that they had come
at his instance, but later on, he tacitly admitted to the protesting
cattlemen that he had a certain amount of interest in sheep raising.

More far-sighted than some of his neighbors, Wade had leased a large
strip of land in the valley for use as winter range. Moran had seemed to
want this land badly, and had offered a really fair price for it, but
Wade had not cared to sell. Relying upon his privilege as lessee, Wade
had not feared the approach of the sheep, and he had no reason to wish
to dispose of his holdings. Now, it began to look as if the purpose was
to "sheep" him out of his own territory, so that the agent might buy up
the lease and homestead rights on practically his own terms. The thing
had been done before in various parts of the cattle country.

Cattle and sheep cannot live on the same range, and when sheep take
possession of a country, cattle must move out of it, or starve