ed
"makings," and rolled himself a cigarette as he watched the foreman
cooking. "Sheep--thousands of them--are coming in."

"What?" Santry straightened up with a jerk which nearly capsized the
frying pan. "Sheep? On our range? You ain't kiddin' me?"

"Nope. Wish I was, but it's a fact. The sheep are feeding on the grass
that we hoped to save against the winter. It's the Jensen outfit, I
could make that out from where I stood."

"Hell!" Stamping angrily across the floor, Santry gazed out into the
twilight. "That dirty, low-lived Swede? But we'll fix him, boy. I know
his breed, the skunk! I'll...." The veins in the old plainsman's throat
stood out and the pupils of his eyes contracted. "I'll run his blamed
outfit out of the valley before noon termorrer. I'll make Jensen
wish...."

"Steady, Bill!" Wade interposed, before the other could voice the
threat. "Violence may come later on perhaps; but right now we must try
to avoid a fight."

"But by the great horned toad...!"

Santry stretched out his powerful hands and slowly clenched his fingers.
He was thinking of the pleasure it would give him to fasten them on
Jensen.

"The thing puzzles me," Wade went on, flecking his cigarette through the
window. "Jensen would never dare to come in here on his own initiative.
He knows that we cowmen have controlled this valley for years, and he's
no fighter. There's lots of good grass on the other side of the
mountains, and he knows that as well as we do. Why does he take chances,
then, on losing his stock, and maybe some of his herders by butting in
here?"

"That's what I want to know," Santry immediately agreed, as though the
thought were his own. "Answer me that! By the great horned toad! If I
had my way...."

"This country isn't what it was ten years ago, Bill. We're supposed to
have courts here now, you know." Santry sighed heavily. "To-morrow,"
Wade continued, "I'll ride over and have a talk with whoever's in charge
of the outfit. Maybe I can learn something. You stay here and keep Kelly
and the rest quiet if they get wind of what's going on and seem inclined
to show fight. I've been, in a way, looking for trouble ever since we
refused to let that fellow, Moran, get a foothold in the valley. If he's
back of this, we've got a clever man to fight."

"There's another _hombre_ I'd like awful well to get my hands on to,"
declared Santry belligerently. "Damned oily, greedy land shark! All
right, all right! Needn't say nothin