a grunt at the end, swung about and ambled
sullenly off up the street.

"Feelin' kinder bad to-night," explained Swope, as his _mayordomo_
butted into the swinging doors of a saloon and disappeared, "but you
remember what I said about them sheep. How do things look up your
way?" he inquired. "Feed pretty good?"

"It's getting awfully dry," replied Hardy noncommittally. "I suppose
your sheep are up on the Black Mesa by this time."

"Ump!" responded the sheepman, and then there was a long pause. "Sit
down," he said at last, squatting upon the edge of the sidewalk, "I
want to talk business with you."

He lit a short black pipe and leaned back comfortably against a post.

"You seem to be a pretty smooth young feller," he remarked,
patronizingly. "How long have you been in these parts? Two months, eh?
How'd Judge Ware come to get a-hold of you?"

"Just picked me up down at Bender," replied Hardy.

"Oh, jest picked you up, hey? I thought mebby you was some kin to him.
Ain't interested in the cattle, are you? Well, I jest thought you
might be, being put in over Jeff that way, you know. Nice boy, that,
but hot-headed as a goat. He'll be making hair bridles down in Yuma
some day, I reckon. His old man was the same way. So you ain't no kin
to the judge and've got no int'rest in the cattle, either, eh? H'm,
how long do you figure on holding down that job?"

"Don't know," replied Hardy; "might quit to-day or get fired
to-morrow. It's a good place, though."

"Not the only one, though," suggested the sheepman shrewdly, "not by a
dam' sight! Ever investigate the sheep business? No? Then you've
overlooked something! I've lived in this country for nigh onto twenty
years, and followed most every line of business, but I didn't make my
pile punching cows, nor running a store, neither--I made it _raising
sheep_. Started in with nothing at the time of the big drought in '92,
herding on shares. Sheep did well in them good years that followed,
and first thing I knew I was a sheepman. Now I've got forty thousand
head, and I'm making a hundred per cent on my investment every year.
Of course, if there comes a drought I'll lose half of 'em, but did
you ever sit down and figure out a hundred per cent a year? Well, five
thousand this year is ten next year, and ten is twenty the next year,
and the twenty looks like forty thousand dollars at the end of three
years. That's quite a jag of money, eh? I won't say what it would be
in three years