“Now, if that isn’t the best piece of news I have heard for a week I wouldn’t say so!” exclaimed the cattleman. “Where there’s timber there is water, of course. I thought the critters were a-travelling along a trifle pearter than they were a while back. Sam, you drive on ahead with the wagon and fill up the cask, and the rest of us will kinder scatter out on the flanks and head the critters toward the willows our friend speaks of.”
“Will you let me get through with what I have to say?” shouted the farmer, his face growing white with anger. “You go near those willows if you dare! There are more than two hundred men hidden among them, and if our pickets can’t turn your cattle back they’ll shoot them!”
“Will, eh?” exclaimed Mr. Chisholm, his face wearing a good-natured smile, that was very aggravating to the brown-whiskered farmer. “I hope not, for if you shoot our stock we’ll have to shoot you to pay for it. Look a-here,” he added, turning his horse about and riding up close to the man he was addressing, “I tell you once for all, stranger——”
“Hold! I command the peace!” cried the sheriff, seeing that the men and boys around the wagon were moving up to support their leader. “Keep back, all of you!”
“The peace hasn’t been broken yet,” replied Mr. Chisholm, “and I assure you that I and my friends have no intention of breaking it; but our watchword is, ‘Grass and water, or blood!’ and it is for you to decide which it shall be. We are not the men to stand by with our hands in our pockets and see our stock perish for want of something to eat and drink, and you misjudge us if that is the kind of fellows you took us for. You farmers were very kind to yourselves when you ran your fences along every water-course in the State, so’t we cattlemen could not get to it. Water’s free and we want our share of it.”
“But our land has been paid for, and you have no right to come upon it after we have told you to keep off,” said the farmer.
“Some of you have paid for the land you raise crops on and some are squatters the same as we cattlemen are,” answered Mr. Chisholm, becoming earnest, but still fighting to keep down his rising anger. “There are miles and miles of these streams been fenced in and shut off from us stock-raisers without any warrant of law, and now we are going to walk over some of them same fences.”
“If you attempt it we shall shoot you down like dogs!” said the farmer fiercely, and as he spoke he lifted his rifle an inch or two from the horn of his saddle, as if he had half a mind to begin the shooting then and there.
“Easy, easy, Mr. Walker,” interposed the sheriff, laying his hand upon the angry man’s arm. “We’ve got the right on our side and the whole power of the State behind us, and there’s no need that you should get yourself into trouble by taking matters into your own hands. I warn you to turn back,” he continued, addressing himself to Mr. Chisholm. “I am an officer of the law, and if you do not pay some attention to what I say I shall be obliged to arrest you.”
The cattleman laughed, not loudly, but heartily and silently.