eatened border--Rufus Hardy, the man of peace, who had
turned over his pistol to the boss. It was a bitter moment for him
when he saw the boys start out on this illicit adventure; but for once
he restrained himself and let it pass. The war would not be settled at
a blow.

At the shoulder of the Peak the posse of cowmen found Jim Clark, his
shaps frayed and his hat slouched to a shapeless mass from long
beating through the brush, and followed in his lead to a pocket
valley, tucked away among the cedars, where they threw off their packs
and camped while Jim and Creede went forward to investigate. It was a
rough place, that crotch between the Peaks, and Shep Thomas had cut
his way through chaparral that stood horse-high before he won the
southern slope. To the north the brush covered all the ridges in a
dense thicket, and it was there that the cow camp was hid; but on the
southern slope, where the sun had baked out the soil, the mountain
side stretched away bare and rocky, broken by innumerable ravines
which came together in a _redondo_ or rounded valley and then plunged
abruptly into the narrow defile of a box canyon. This was the middle
fork, down which Shep Thomas had made his triumphal march the year
before, and down which Juan Alvarez would undoubtedly march again.

Never but once had the sheep been in that broad valley, and the heavy
rains had brought out long tufts of grama grass from the bunchy roots
along the hillsides. As Creede and Jim Clark crept up over the brow of
the western ridge and looked down upon it they beheld a herd of forty
or fifty wild horses, grazing contentedly along the opposite hillside;
and far below, where the valley opened out into the _redondo_, they
saw a band of their own tame horses feeding. Working in from either
side--the wild horses from the north, where they had retreated to
escape the drought; the range animals from the south, where the sheep
had fed off the best grass--they had made the broad mountain valley a
rendezvous, little suspecting the enemy that was creeping in upon
their paradise. Already the distant bleating of the sheep was in the
air; a sheepman rode up to the summit, looked over at the promised
land and darted back, and as the first struggling mass of leaders
poured out from the cut trail and drifted down into the valley the
wild stallions shook out their manes in alarm and trotted farther
away.

A second band of outlaws, unseen before, came galloping along the
we