d shape to travel.

In moving them at this time Larkin had seized the psychological moment.

The disgruntled cattle-owners, under a guard of ten men, were resting
quietly far from anything resembling excitement in one of the untracked
places among the mesas and scoria buttes. Bud had ascertained, by spies of
his own that scoured the country, that the great posse of rescuing
cowpunchers had gone safely off on a wild-goose chase, misled by one of
the sheepmen who was unknown in the country.

For the present, therefore, the range was clear, and Bud reckoned on its
remaining so until the cattlemen had been rescued from their durance vile.
In such a time the sheep-danger shrank into insignificance, and Larkin
counted on having his animals across the Bar T range before the finding of
the cattlemen, after which, of course, the men would be turned loose with
much commiseration and apology.

Of the seventy men guarding and driving the sheep not more than thirty
were regular herders. Forty were mounted and belonged to Jimmie Welsh's
fighting corps, which was composed mostly of owners and superintendents
from the north country.

Your usual Western shepherd is not a fighting man and cases have occurred
in the bitter range wars where a herder has been shot down in cold blood
unable to make a defense because of the grass growing out of his rifle.

Years alone in the brooding silence of the Sierra slopes or the obscure
valleys of the northern Rockies take the virulence out of a man and make
him placid and at one with nature. Into his soul there sinks something of
the grandeur of cloud-hooded peaks, the majesty of limitless horizons and
the colors of sky-blue water and greensward. With him strife is an unknown
thing except for the strife of wits with another herder who would attempt
to share a succulent mountain meadow.

Common report has it, and such writers as Emerson Hough put it in their
books, that a sheep-herder can scarcely follow his calling for seven years
without going mad. On the other hand, those who have lived for years among
the sheep declare that they have never seen a sheep-herder even mentally
unbalanced.

Probably both are right, as is usual to a degree in all discussion; but
the fact remained that, sane or insane, the herder was not a fighting
man--something had gone out of him. Therefore in bringing men other than
herders south with him, Jimmie Welsh had shown his cleverness. To fight
riders he had brought r