d of the
English language.

"They're Hutchins's all right," said Charley, who had ridden out to look
at the brand painted black on the animals' flanks. "No go to-night," he
told the attentive herder. "Camp here."

He threw off his saddle. Tom Carroll rode away to find California John.

The two together, with Ross Fletcher, whom they had stumbled upon
accidentally, returned late the following afternoon. By sunrise next
morning the flocks were under way for Inyo. The sheep strung out by the
dogs went forward steadily like something molten; the sheepherders
plodded along staff in hand; the rangers brought up the rear, riding.
Thus they went for the marching portions of two days. Then at noon they
topped the main crest at the broad Pass, and the sheer descents on the
Inyo side lay before them. From beneath them flowed the plains of Owen's
Valley, so far down that the white roads showed like gossamer threads,
the ranches like tiny squares of green. Eight thousand feet almost
straight down the precipice fell away. Across the valley rose the White
Mountains and the Panamints, and beyond them dimly could be guessed
Death Valley and the sombre Funeral Ranges. To the north was a lake with
islands swimming in it, and above it empty craters looking from above
like photographs of the topography of the moon; and beyond it tier after
tier, as far as the eye could reach, the blue mountains of Nevada. A
narrow gorge, standing fairly on end, led down from the Pass. Without
hesitation, like a sluggishly moving, viscid brown fluid, the sheep
flowed over the edge. The dogs, their flanking duties relieved by the
walls of dark basalt on either hand, fell to the rear with their
masters. The mountain-bred horses dropped calmly down the rough and
precipitous trail.

At the end of an hour the basalt gorge opened out to a wide steep slope
of talus on which grew in clumps the first sage brush of the desert.
Here California John called a halt. The line of the Reserve, unmarked as
yet save by landmarks and rare rough "monuments" of loose stones, lay
but just beyond.

"This is as far as we go," he told the chief herder.

The Frenchman flashed his teeth, and bowed with some courtesy. "Au
revoi'," said he.

"Hold on," repeated California John, "I said this is as far as we go.
That means you, too; and your men."

"But th' ship!" cried the chief herder.

"My rangers will put them off the Reserve, according to regulation,"
stated California Joh