re to
stop them they might never have taken the range--but after that, all
through the hot summer when the cattle were dying for feed, every time
the wind came up and roared in my ears I would hear sheep--_baaa_,
_baaa_--and now I hear them again."

He paused and looked up at her intently.

"Do you know what that noise means to me?" he demanded, almost
roughly. "It means little calves dying around the water hole; mothers
lowing for their little ones that they have left to starve; it means
long lines of cows following me out over the mesa for brush, and all
the trees cut down. Ah, Lucy, how can your father talk of waiting when
it means as much as that?"

"But last year was a drought," protested Lucy pitifully. "Will it be
as bad this year?"

"Every bit! Did you notice that plain between Bender and the river? It
will be like that in a week if we let them cross the river."

"Oh," cried Lucy, "then you--do you mean to turn them back?"

"The river is very high," answered Hardy sombrely. "They cannot
cross." And then as a quail strikes up leaves and dust to hide her
nest, he launched forth quickly upon a story of the flood.

The Salagua was long in flood that Spring. Day after day, while the
sheep wandered uneasily along its banks rearing up to strip the last
remnants of browse from the tips of willows and burro bushes, it
rolled ponderously forth from its black-walled gorge and flowed past
the crossing, deep and strong, sucking evenly into the turbid
whirlpool that waited for its prey. At the first approach of the
invaders the unconsidered zeal of Judge Ware overcame him; he was for
peace, reason, the saner judgment that comes from wider views and a
riper mind, and, fired by the hope of peaceful truce, he rode
furtively along the river waving a white handkerchief whenever he saw
a sheep-herder, and motioning him to cross. But however anxious he was
for an interview the desires of the sheepmen did not lean in that
direction, and they only stared at him stolidly or pretended not to
see.

Thwarted in his efforts for peace the judge returned to camp deep in
thought. The sheep were at his very door and nothing had been done to
stay them; a deadly apathy seemed to have settled down upon the
cowmen; after all their threats there were no preparations for
defence; the river was not even patrolled; and yet if quick action was
not taken the upper range might be irreparably ruined before the
reserve was proclaimed. Not that h