tell you of the old days o' the sheep an' cattle
war. The debates were considerable fervent an' plenty frequent, an' a
Winchester or two made it seem emphatic a whole lot."

"Was Rifle-Eye mixed up in it?"

"Which he's allers been a sort of Florence Nightingale of the Rockies,
has old Rifle-Eye," was the reply. "I don't mean in looks--but if a
feller's shot up or hurt, or anythin' of that kind, it isn't long before
the old hunter turns up, takes him to some shack near by and persuades
somebody to look after him till he gets around again. An' we've got a
little lady that rides a white mare in these here Sierras who's a sure
enough angel. I don't want to know her pedigree, but when it comes to
angels, she's It. An' when she an' Rifle-Eye hitches up to do the
ministerin' act, you'd better believe the job's done right. I never
heard but of one man that ever said 'No' to Rifle-Eye, no matter what
fool thing he asked."

"How was that?" asked Wilbur.

"It was the wind-up of one o' these here little differences of opinion
on the sheep question, same as I've been tellin' you of. It happened
somewhar up in Oregon, although I've forgotten the name o' the ranch.
Rifle-Eye could tell you the story better'n I can, but he won't. It was
somethin' like this:

"There was a big coulee among the hills, an', one summer, when there'd
been a prairie fire that wiped out a lot o' feed, a bunch o' cattle was
headed into this coulee. Three cowpunchers and a cook with the chuck
wagon made up the gang. But this yar cook was one o' them fellers what's
not only been roped by bad luck, but hog-tied and branded good and
plenty. He had been the boss of a ranch, a small one, but he'd fallen
foul o' the business end of a blizzard, an' he'd lost every blamed head
o' cattle that he had. He lost his wife, too."

"How did she come in on it?"

"It was this way. She heard, or thought she heard, some one callin'
outside, a little ways from the house. She s'posed, o' course, that it
was the men who had tackled the storm in the hope o' savin' some o' the
cattle, an' she ran out o' the door to give 'em an answerin' hail so as
they could git an idee as to the direction o' the house. But she hadn't
gone but a few steps when the wind caught her--leastways, that was how
they figured it out afterwards--and blew her along a hundred feet or so
before she could catch breath, and then she stumbled and fell. She got
up, sort o' dazed, most like, and tried to run bac