about this
matter. I understand that there was some shots fired at the time you
speak of."

"Sure thing," replied Creede. "Juan took a couple of shots at me as I
was goin' down the canyon. He looked so dam' funny, sittin' up on that
ledge like a monkey-faced owl, that I couldn't help laughin', and of
course it riled him some. But that's all right--I wouldn't hold it up
against a dead man."

The deputy sheriff laughed in spite of himself, and the coroner
chuckled, too. The death of a Mexican sheep-herder was not a very
sombre matter to gentlemen of their profession.

"I suppose you were armed?" inquired the coroner casually.

"I had my six-shooter in my shaps, all right."

"Ah, is that the gun? What calibre is it?"

"A forty-five."

The officers of the law glanced at each other knowingly, and the
deputy turned back toward the ranch.

"The deceased was shot with a thirty-thirty," observed the coroner
briefly, and there the matter was dropped.

"Umm, a thirty-thirty," muttered Creede, "now who in--" He paused and
nodded his head, and a look of infinite cunning came into his face as
he glanced over his shoulder at the retreating posse.

"Bill Johnson!" he said, and then he laughed--but it was not a
pleasant laugh.

CHAPTER XXII

PORTENTS OF WAR

There were signs of impending war on Bronco Mesa. As God sent the rain
and the flowers and grass sprang up they grappled with each other like
murderers, twining root about root for the water, fighting upward for
the light--and when it was over the strongest had won. Every tree and
plant on that broad range was barbed and fanged against assault; every
creature that could not flee was armed for its own defence; it was a
land of war, where the strongest always won. What need was there for
words? Juan Alvarez was dead, shot from some distant peak while
rounding up his sheep--and his sheep, too, were dead.

They buried the boss herder under a pile of rocks on Lookout Point and
planted a cross above him, not for its Christian significance, nor yet
because Juan was a good Catholic, but for the Mexicans to look at in
the Spring, when the sheep should come to cross. Jim Swope attended to
this himself, after the coroner had given over the body, and for a
parting word he cursed Jeff Creede.

Then for a day the world took notice of their struggle--the great
outside world that had left them to fight it out. Three thousand head
of sheep had been killed; mutton enough