ep you out," retorted the sheepman
sullenly. "And if I'd 'a' thought for a minute you would take on like
this about it I'd've let you go bust for your postage stamps."

"I know you didn't _say_ it," said Hardy, "but you hinted it good and
strong, all right. And when a man comes as near to it as you have I
think I've got a right to ask him straight out what his intentions
are. Now how about it--are you going to sheep us out next Fall or are
you going to give us a chance?"

"Oh hell!" burst out Swope, in a mock fury, "I'm never going to talk
to _you_ any more! You're crazy, man! _I_ never said I was going to
sheep you out!"

"No," retorted Hardy dryly, "and you never said you wasn't, either."

"Yes, I did, too," spat back Swope, seizing at a straw. "Didn't I
introduce you to my boss herder and tell him to keep off your range?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Hardy coldly. "Did you?"

For a moment the sheepman sat rigid in the darkness. Then he rose to
his feet, cursing.

"Well, you can jest politely go to hell," he said, with venomous
deliberation, and racked off down the street.

CHAPTER X

"FEED MY SHEEP"

The slow, monotonous days of Summer crept listlessly by like dreams
which, having neither beginning nor end, pass away into nothingness,
leaving only a dim memory of restlessness and mystery.

In the relentless heat of noon-day the earth seemed to shimmer and
swim in a radiance of its own; at evening the sun set in a glory
incomparable; and at dawn it returned to its own. Then in the long
breathless hours the cows sought out the scanty shadow of the canyon
wall, sprawling uneasily in the sand; the lizards crept far back into
the crevices of the rocks; the birds lingered about the water holes,
throttling their tongues, and all the world took on a silence that was
almost akin to death. As the Summer rose to its climax a hot wind
breathed in from the desert, clean and pure, but withering in its
intensity; the great bowlders, superheated in the glare of day,
irradiated the stored-up energy of the sun by night until even the
rattlesnakes, their tough hides scorched through by the burning sands,
sought out their winter dens to wait for a touch of frost. There was
only one creature in all that heat-smitten land that defied the sway
of the Sun-God and went his way unheeding--man, the indomitable, the
conqueror of mountains and desert and sea.

When the sun was hottest, then was the best time to pursue the bla