pid fire of exhortation and protest, some urging Creede to
take him up, others clamoring for peace.

"No!" shouted Jefferson Creede, raising his voice angrily above the
uproar. "I won't do it! I wouldn't trust a sheepman as far as I could
throw a bull by the tail! You'd sell your black soul for two bits,
Jasp Swope," he observed, peering warily over the top of the rock,
"and you'd shoot a man in the back, too!"

"But look at me!" cried Swope, dropping off his mule, "I'm stripped to
my shirt; there goes my gun into the water--and I'm on your side of
the river! You're a coward, Jeff Creede, and I always knowed it!"

"But my head ain't touched," commented Creede dryly. "I've got you
stopped anyhow. What kind of a dam' fool would I be to fight over
it?"

"I'll fight ye for nothin', then!" bellowed the sheepman. "I'll--" He
stopped abruptly and a great quiet fell upon both shores. From the
mouth of the hidden ravine a man had suddenly stepped into the open,
unarmed, and now he was coming out across the sands to meet him. It
was Rufus Hardy, dwarfed like David before Goliath in the presence of
the burly sheepman, but striding over the hard-packed sand with the
lithe swiftness of a panther.

"_I'll_ fight you," he said, raising his hand in challenge, but
Swope's answer was drowned in a wild yell from Creede.

"Come back here, Rufe, you durn' fool!" he called. "Come back, I tell
ye! Don't you know better than to trust a sheepman?"

"Never mind, now," answered Hardy, turning austerely to the bluff. "I
guess I can take care of myself."

He swung about and advanced to the stretch of level sand where Swope
was standing. "What guarantee do I get," he demanded sharply, "that if
I lick you in a fair fight the sheep will go around?"

"You--lick--me!" repeated the sheepman, showing his jagged teeth in a
sardonic grin. "Well, I'll tell ye, Willie; if you hit me with that
lily-white hand of yourn, and I find it out the same day, I'll promise
to stay off'n your range for a year."

"All right," replied Hardy, suddenly throwing away his hat. "You
noticed it when I hit you before, didn't you?" he inquired, edging
quickly in on his opponent and beginning an amazing bout of shadow
boxing. "Well, _come on_, _then_!" He laughed as Swope struck out at
him, and continued his hectoring banter. "As I remember it your head
hit the ground before your heels!"

Then in a whirlwind of blows and feints they came together. It was the
old story