. He looked over his shoulder as he heaved on the cinch. "That's
where that dust was," he said, and as the outfit stood gaping he swung
up and was off into the darkness.

"Hey, take my gun!" yelled Jeff, but the clatter of hoofs never
faltered--he was going it blind and unarmed. Late that night another
horseman on a flea-bitten gray dashed madly after him over the Pocket
trail. It was Old Bill Johnson, crazed with apprehension; and behind
him straggled his hounds, worn from their long chase after the lion,
but following dutifully on their master's scent. The rest of the
outfit rode over in the morning--the punchers with their pistols
thrust into the legs of their shaps; Creede black and staring with
anger; the judge asking a thousand unanswered questions and protesting
against any resort to violence; the women tagging along helplessly,
simply because they could not be left alone. And there, pouring forth
from the mouth of Hell's Hip Pocket, came the sheep, a solid phalanx,
urged on by plunging herders and spreading out over the broad mesa
like an invading army. Upon the peaks and ridges round about stood
groups of men, like skirmishers--camp rustlers with their packs and
burros; herders, whose sheep had already passed through--every man
with his gun in his hand. The solid earth of the trail was worn down
and stamped to dust beneath the myriad feet, rising in a cloud above
them as they scrambled through the pass; and above all other sounds
there rose the high, sustained tremolo of the sheep:

"_Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay!_"

To the ears of the herders it was music, like the thunder of stamps to
a miner or the rumble of a waterfall to a lonely fisher; the old,
unlistened music of their calling, above which the clamor of the world
must fight its way. But to the cowmen it was like all hell broken
loose, a confusion, a madness, a babel which roused every passion in
their being and filled them with a lust to kill.

Without looking to the right or to the left, Jefferson Creede fixed
his eyes upon one man in that riot of workers and rode for him as a
corral hand marks down a steer. It was Jasper Swope, hustling the last
of a herd through the narrow defile, and as his Chihuahuanos caught
sight of the burly figure bearing down upon the _padron_ they
abandoned their work to help him. From the hill above, Jim Swope, his
face set like iron for the conflict, rode in to back up his brother;
and from far down the c