CHAPTER IX: HIS MATE
When Treve saved Chris Hibben from a peculiarly hideous death under the hoofs of Chris’s own Triple Bar steers, he did more to patch up a truce between the Dos Hermanos and the Triple Bar outfits than could a score of peace conferences.
From the beginning, throughout the West, sheepmen and cattlemen have been mortal enemies. Seldom has this eternal feud blazed hotter than between Chris Hibben’s cattle ranch and the nearby Dos Hermanos sheep ranch of Joel Fenno and Royce Mack.
Ever there had been a grim understanding that a sheep or sheepdog straying over the line into the Triple Bar range was a sheep or sheepdog killed. More than once this understanding had been justified.
Then, too, a year before, a bunch of six yearling beef cattle had strayed through a fence gap and down the coulée into Number Six camp of the Dos Hermanos. There all trace of them was wiped out;—except that Toni and the other Dos Hermanos herdsmen varied their dreary fare of tinned goods and tough mutton by a prolonged fresh-beef debauch.
Then had come the day when Treve unwittingly played the rôle of Dove of Peace by turning a cattle stampede and saving the dismounted Hibben from being trampled into the next world. After which Chris gave terse command to his cowboys that the pesky Dos Hermanos sheep could come along and chew the barbs off the wire of the Triple Bar home corral if they chose to; and if need be they were to be escorted back in safety and in cotton wool.
Nor did Hibben stop there. From that one briefly terrific moment of the turned stampede, he had seen what a collie could accomplish with cattle. He saw more. He saw that two or three well-trained collies could do the work of a dozen cowboys. Yes, and they could and would do it on board wages and without threats of going on strike or complaints about the grub. Nor would they vanish on pay-day and show up a week later with delirium tremens. It would be a tremendous saving. Anyhow, the experiment was worth trying.
It was not Hibben’s custom to do anything rashly. Thus he planned to begin in a small way; by the purchase of a single collie. If that first dog should do the work satisfactorily it would be time to buy more. With this in view he surprised the Dos Hermanos partners, one evening, by riding across to their ranch-house. Mack and Fenno were sitting on the handkerchief-sized porch, smoking a before-bedtime pipe. At Royce’s feet lay Treve.
On sound of Hibben’s approach, the big collie was awake and alert. Down the path he dashed, to meet, and if need be stop, the intruder. Then, recognizing the man he had rescued, the collie drew aside and let Chris proceed up the path to the porch.