“Well,” responded the rodéo boss philosophically, “any time you fellers want to go up against them thirty-thirties you can do so. It’s your own funeral, and I’ll promise to do the honors right. But I’m a law-abidin’ cuss myself. I’m all the law now, ever since I talked with Jim Swope––it’s the greatest graft they is.”
He paused, busily scraping his horn with a piece of glass.
“They’s no doubt about it, fellers,” he said at last, “we’ve been slow in the head. It’s a wonder we ain’t all of us makin’ hat bands in Yuma, by this 330 time. I used to think that if you didn’t like a sheepman’s looks the way to do was to wade in and work him over a little; but that’s a misdemeanor, and it don’t go now. It took as good a man as Rufe, here, to put me wise; but I leave my gun in camp after this. I’ve got them Greasers buffaloed, anyhow, and Jasp knows if he plugs me when I’m unarmed it’ll be a sure shot for the pen. The time may come when guns is necessary, but I move that every man leave his six-shooter in his bed and we’ll go after ’em with our bare hands. What d’ ye say, Ben?”
Ben Reavis rose up on one elbow, rolled his eyes warily, and passed a jet of tobacco juice into the hissing fire.
“Not f’r me,” he said, with profane emphasis.
“No, ner f’r me, either,” chimed in Charley Clark. “A man stays dead a long time in this dry climate.”
“Well, you fellers see how many of my steers you can ketch, then,” said Creede, “and I’ll move them sheep myself––leastways, me and Rufe.”
“All right,” assented Reavis resignedly, “but you want to hurry up. I saw a cloud o’ dust halfway to Hidden Water this afternoon.”
The next morning as the rodéo outfit hustled out to pick up what cattle they could before they were scattered by the sheep, Jim Clark, tall, solemn-faced, and angular, rode by devious ways toward the 331 eastern shoulder of the Four Peaks, where a distant clamor told of the great herds which mowed the mountain slopes like a thousand sickles. Having seen him well on his way Creede and Hardy galloped down the cañon, switched off along the hillside and, leaving their horses among the rocks, climbed up on a rocky butte to spy out the land below. High ridges and deep cañons, running down from the flanks of the Four Peaks, lay to the east and north and west; and to the south they merged into the broad expanse of Bronco Mesa.
There it lay, a wilderness of little hills and valleys, flat-topped benches and sandy gulches threaded minutely with winding trails and cow paths, green with the illusion of drought-proof giant cactus and vivid desert bushes, one vast preserve of browse and grass from the Peaks to the gorge of the Salagua. Here was the last battle-ground, the last stand of the cowmen against the sheep, and then unless that formless myth, “The Government,” which no man had ever seen or known, stepped in, there would be no more of the struggle; the green mesa would be stripped of its evanescent glory and the sheep would wander at will. But as long as there was still a chance and the cows had young calves that would die, there was nothing for it but to fight on, warily and desperately, to the end.