He raised his voice to a roar, muffled to a beast-like 355 hoarseness by his swollen jaws, and the ramada reverberated like a cavern as he bellowed out his challenge. Then the door was snatched violently open and Jefferson Creede stepped forth, looking black as hell itself. In one hand he held the sheepman’s pistol and in the other his own.
“Here!” he said, and striding forward he thrust Swope’s gun into his hand. “It’s loaded, too,” he added. “Now, you––if you’ve got any shootin’ to do, go to it!”
He stepped back quickly and stood ready, his masterful eyes bent upon his enemy in a scowl of unquenchable hate. Once before they had faced each other, waiting for that mysterious psychic prompting without which neither man nor beast can begin a fight, and Jim had stepped in between––but Hardy stood aside without a word. It was a show-down and, bulldog fighter though he was, Jasper Swope weakened. The anger of his enemy overcame his hostile spirit without a blow, and he turned his pistol away.
“That’s all I wanted,” he said, shoving the gun sullenly into its holster. “They’s two of you, and––”
“And you’re afraid,” put in Creede promptly. He stood gazing at the downcast sheepman, his lip curling contemptuously.
“I’ve never seen a sheepman yet,” he said, “that 356 would fight. You’ve listened to that blat until it’s a part of ye; you’ve run with them Mexicans until you’re kin to ’em; you’re a coward, Jasp Swope, and I always knowed it.” He paused again, his eyes glowing with the hatred that had overmastered his being. “My God,” he said, “if I could only git you to fight to-day I’d give everything I’ve got left!”
The sheepman’s gaze was becoming furtive as he watched them. He glanced sidewise, edging away from the door; then, pricking his mule with his spurs, he galloped madly away, ducking his head at every jump as if he feared a shot.
“Look at the cowardly dastard!” sneered Creede bitterly. “D’ye know what he would do if that was me? He’d shoot me in the back. Ah, God A’mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this––every dam’ one of ’em––and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty.” He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.
“God A’mighty,” he moaned, “I can’t keep nothin’!” And stumbling back into the house he slammed the door behind him.
A gloom settled down over the place, a gloom that lasted for days. The cowboys came back from driving 357 the town herd and, going up on the mesa, they gathered a few head more. Then the heat set in before its time and the work stopped short. For the steer that is roped and busted in the hot weather dies suddenly at the water; the flies buzz about the ears of the new-marked calves and poison them, and the mother cows grow gaunt and thin from overheating. Not until the long Summer had passed could the riding continue; the steers must be left to feed down the sheeped-out range; the little calves must run for sleepers until the fall rodéo. Sheep and the drought had come together, and the round-up was a failure. Likewise the cowmen were broke.