"I should think you would complain to the Indian agencies," suggested the Professor.
"Doesn't pay. They would take it out of us in a worse way, perhaps. They're a revengeful gang."
One by one the herders came in with their dogs and flocks, rounding the sheep in for the night, having chosen for the purpose a slight depression in the plain. For the first time, the boys had an opportunity to meet the ranchers and compare them with the cattle men they tad known in Texas. They were a hardy lot, taciturn and solemn-faced. The most silent man in the bunch, was Noisy Cooper, who scarcely ever spoke a word unless forced to do so by an insistent question. Bat Coyne had been a cattle man down in Texas, while Mary Johnson—so called because of his pink and white complexion, which no amount of sun or wind could tarnish—was said to have come from the East. He had left there for reasons best known to himself, working on sheep ever since.
It was Old Hicks, however, who interested Tad most. Hicks's first words after being introduced were in apology for being cook on a sheep ranch.
He was limping about, flourishing a frying-pan to accentuate his protests.
"I'm a cowpuncher, I am. Wish I'd never joined this mutton outfit," he growled.
"Then why did you?" asked Tad, smiling broadly.
"Why? I joined because I could get more pay. That's why. What you suppose I joined for?"
"I thought perhaps you preferred sheep," answered the lad meekly.
"Like them—like mutton?" snarled Old Hicks, hurling his frying-pan angrily into the chuck wagon. "Between sheep and had Injuns, give me the Injun every time. Why, every time I have to cook one it makes me sick; it does."