Jasper Swope had whirled back from the blow as a rattler throws his coils. His gray eyes gleamed and he showed all his broken teeth as he spat back hate and defiance at Creede; but Jim was his elder brother and had bested him more than once since the days of their boyish quarrels. Slowly and grudgingly he made way, backing sullenly off with his Mexicans; and Jim stood alone, opposing his cold resolution to the white-hot wrath of Creede.
“You can turn back them sheep and git off my range!” yelled Creede. “Turn ’em back, I say, or I’ll leave my mark on some of you!”
“How can I turn ’em back?” argued Swope, throwing out his hands. “They’s ninety thousand more behind me, and all headin’ through this pass.”
“You know very well that this is a put-up job,” retorted Creede hotly. “You sheepmen have been crawlin’ around on your bellies for a month to get a chanst to sheep us out, and now you say you can’t help yourself! You’re the crookedest, lyingest sheep-puller in the bunch, Jim Swope. You’d rob a graveyard and show up for prayers the next mornin’. I can lick you, you big Mormon-faced 295 stiff, with one hand tied behind me, and what’s more––”
“Here now––here no-ow––” protested Swope, holding out his hand for peace, “they ain’t no call for no such talk. Mebbe you can lick me, and mebbe you can’t, but it won’t do you any good to try. My sheep is here, and here they’ll stay, until I git good and ready to move ’em. This is a free range and a free country, and the man ain’t born that can make me stop.”
He paused, and fixed his keen eyes upon Creede, searching him to the heart; and before that cold, remorseless gaze the fighting frenzy in his brain died away. Meanwhile Hardy had come up from where he had been turning back sheep, and as he rode in Jeff instinctively made way for him.
“No,” replied Hardy, fastening his stern eyes upon the iron visage of the sheepman, “not if the lives of a thousand cattle and the last possessions of a dozen men lay in your way. You and your legal rights! It is men like you who make the law worse than nothing and turn honest cowmen into criminals. If there is anything in it you will lie to the assessor or rob a poor man’s cabin with the best of them, but when it comes to your legal right to sheep us out you are all for law and order. Sure, you will uphold the statutes with your life! Look at those renegade 296 Mexicans, every man armed by you with a rifle and a revolver! Is that the way to come onto another man’s range? If you are going to sheep us out, you can try it on; but for God’s sake cut it out about your sacred rights!”
He rose up in his saddle, haranguing the assembly as he spoke, and once more Jim Swope felt his cause being weakened by the attacks of this vehement little cowman.
“Well, what kin I do about it?” he cried, throwing out his hands in virtuous appeal. “My sheep has got to eat, hain’t they?”
“Sure,” assented Hardy, “and so have our cattle. But I tell you what you can do––you can go out through that pass yonder!”