e sights. "You--"

He rested the rifle against one of the _ramada_ posts, and caught his
breath to aim, while the cowmen regarded him cynically, yet with a
cold speculation in their eyes. Hardy alone sprang forward to spoil
his aim, and for a minute they bandied words like pistol shots as they
struggled for the gun. Then with a last wailing curse, the big cowboy
snapped the cartridge out of his rifle and handed it over to his
partner.

"You're right," he said, "let the dastard live. But if I ever git
another chanst at Jasp Swope I'll kill him, if I swing for it! He's
the boy I'm lookin' for, but you see how he dodges me? I've been
movin' his sheep for two days! He's afraid of me--he's afraid to come
out and fight me like a man! But I'll git 'im--I'll git 'im yet!"

"All right," said Hardy soothingly, "you can do it, for all of me. But
don't go to shooting Mexicans off of rocks as if they were turkey
buzzards--that's what gets people into the pen. Now, you just take my
advice for once and wash some of that dirt off your face. You're
locoed, man--you're not a human being--and you won't be until you wash
up and get your belly full."

Half an hour later they sat down to breakfast, the burly fighting
animal and the man who had taught him reason; and as they ate the
fierce anger of the cowboy passed away like mists before the morning
sun. He heaped his plate up high and emptied it again, drinking coffee
from his big cup, and as if ashamed of his brutishness he began
forthwith to lay out a campaign of peace. With sheep scurrying in
every direction across the range in the great drive that was now on
it was no use to try to gather cows. What they had they could day-herd
and the rest would have to wait. The thing to do now was to protect
the feed around the water, so that the cattle would not have to travel
so far in the heat of summer. No objection being offered he gave each
man a watercourse to patrol, sending one over into the Pocket to see
what had happened to Bill Johnson; and then, with his gun packed in
his bed, he started back with Hardy to watch over Hidden Water.

The sun was well up as they topped the high ridge; and the mesa,
though ploughed through and through by the trails of the hurrying
sheep, still shimmered in its deceptive green. Not for a month had
there been a cloud in the sky and the grass on the barren places was
already withering in the heat, yet in the distance the greasewood and
the _palo verdes_ a