heep, sure as yuh live." Andy did not
wait for more, but started at a fast walk for the stable and his horse.
After him went the Native Son, who had not been with the Flying U long
enough to sense the magnitude of the affront, and Slim, who knew to a
nicety just what "cowmen" considered the unpardonable sin, and the rest
of the Happy Family, who were rather incredulous still.

"Must be some fool herder just crossing the coulee, on the move
somewhere," Weary gave as a solution. "Half of 'em don't know a fence
when they see it."

As they galloped toward the sound and the smell, they expressed freely
their opinion of sheep, the men who owned them, and the lunatics who
watched over the blatting things. They were cattlemen to the marrow
in their bones, and they gloried in their prejudice against the woolly
despoilers of the range.

All these years had the Flying U been immune from the nuisance, save for
an occasional trespasser, who was quickly sent about his business. The
Flying U range had been kept in the main inviolate from the little, gray
vandals, which ate the grass clean to the sod, and trampled with their
sharp-pointed hoofs the very roots into lifelessness; which polluted the
water-holes and creeks until cattle and horses went thirsty rather than
drink; which, in that land of scant rainfall, devastated the range
where they fed so that a long-established prairie-dog town was not more
barren. What wonder if the men who owned cattle, and those who tended
them, hated sheep? So does the farmer dread an invasion of grasshoppers.

A mile down the coulee they came upon the band with two herders and four
dogs keeping watch. Across the coulee and up the hillsides they spread
like a noisome gray blanket. "Maa-aa, maa-aa, maa-aa," two thousand
strong they blatted a strident medley while they hurried here and there
after sweeter bunches of grass, very much like a disturbed ant-hill.

The herders loitered upon either slope, their dogs lying close beside
them. There was good grass in that part of the coulee; the Flying U
had saved it for the saddle horses that were to be gathered and held
temporarily at the ranch; for it would save herding, and a week in that
pasture would put a keen edge on their spirits for the hard work of the
calf roundup. A dozen or two that ranged close had already been driven
into the field and were feeding disdainfully in a corner as far away
from the sheep as the fence would permit.

The Happy Fami