very first
winter the sheep drifted in on you--where no sheep had never blatted
before--and eat you out of house and home."

"I sold out in the spring," reflected Stanley. "I ran two hundred head
of stock up to one hundred and twelve in six months. Go on! Your story
interests me, strangely. I begin to think I was not as big a fool as
I thought I was, and that it was foolish of me to ever think my folly
was--"

Johnson interrupted him.

"Then you bought a bunch of sheep. Son, you can't realize how
great-minded it is of me to overlook that slip of yours! You was out of
the way of every man in the world; you was on your own range, watering at
your own wells--the only case like that on record. And the second dark
night some petulant and highly anonymous cowboys run off your herder and
stampeded your woollies over a bluff."

"Sheep outrages have happened before," observed Stan, rather dryly.

"Sheep outrages are perpetrated by cowmen on cow ranges," rejoined Pete
hotly. "I guess I ought to know. Sheepmen aren't ever killed on their own
ranges; it isn't respectable. Sheepmen are all right in their place--and
hell's the place."

"Peter!" said Stan. "Such langwidge!"

"Wallop! Wallop!" barked Peter, defiant and indignant. "I will say
wallop! Now you shut up whilst I go on with your sad history. Son, you
was afflicted some with five-card insomnia--and right off, when you first
came, you had it fair shoved on you by people usually most disobligin'.
It wasn't just for your money; there was plenty could stack 'em higher
than you could, and them fairly achin' to be fleeced, at that. If your
head hadn't been attached to your shoulders good and strong, if you
hadn't figured to be about square, or maybe rectangular, you had a
chance to be a poker fiend or a booze hoist."

"You're spoofing me, old dear. Wake up; it's morning."

"Don't fool yourself, son. There was a steady organized effort to get you
in bad. And it took money to get all these people after your goat. Some
one round here was managin' the game, for pay. But't wasn't no Arizona
head that did the plannin'. Any Rocky Mountain roughneck mean enough for
that would 'a' just killed you once and been done with it. No, sir; this
party was plumb civilized--this guy that wanted your goat. He wanted to
spoil your rep; he probably had conscientious scruples about bloodshed.
Early trainin'," said Mr. Johnson admiringly, "is a wonderful thing! And,
after they found you wouldn