“I’ve noticed,” replied Hardy, “that you sheepmen get in a hurry once in a while. You can’t stop to knock on a door so you kick it open; can’t stop to go around a ranch, so you go through it, and so on.”
“Ah,” observed Swope slyly, “so that’s what’s bitin’ you, eh? I reckon you must be that new superintendent that Jim was tellin’ about.”
“That’s right,” admitted Hardy, “and you’re Mr. Swope, of course. Well, I’ll say this for you, Mr. Swope, you certainly know how to get sheep across a river. But when it comes to getting along with cowmen,” he added, as the sheepman grinned his self-approval, “you don’t seem to stack up very high.”
“Oh, I don’t, hey?” demanded Swope defiantly. “Well, how about the cowmen? Your friend Creede gets along with sheepmen like a house afire, don’t he? Him and a bunch of his punchers jumped on one of my herders last Fall and dam’ nigh beat him to death. Did you ever hear of a sheepman jumpin’ on a cowboy? No, by Gad, and you never will! We carry arms to protect ourselves, but we never make no trouble.”
He paused and combed the coffee grounds out of his heavy red mustache with fingers that were hooked like an eagle’s talons from clutching at sheep in the cold water.
“I don’t doubt, Mr. Superintendent,” he said, with sinister directness, “that these cowmen have filled you up about what bad hombres we are––and of course it ain’t no use to say nothin’ now––but I jest want to tell you one thing, and I want you to remember it if any trouble should come up; we sheepmen have never gone beyond our legal rights, and we’ve got the law behind us. The laws of the United States and the statutes of this Territory guarantee us the right to graze our sheep on public lands and to go where we dam’ please––and we’ll go, too, you can bank on that.”
He added this last with an assurance which left no doubt as to his intentions, and Hardy made no reply. His whole mind seemed centred on a handful of beans from which he was picking out the rocks and little lumps of clay which help to make up full weight.
“Well!” challenged Swope, after waiting for his answer, “ain’t that straight?”