“Yes, he has a strain of Kentucky blue-blood. My wife owned a thoroughbred when we came West. We keep the descent still. We’ve never been without a black horse in the stable since that time. Do we turn here?”
They were following the lower trail by the willows, when Jacobs turned abruptly to a rough roadway leading up a shadowy hollow.
“Yes. It’s an ugly climb, but much shorter to the sheep range and the cattle are near.”
“How much land have you here, Jacobs?” Asher asked.
“From Little Wolf to the corporation line of Wykerton. Five hundred acres, more or less; all fenced, too,” Jacobs added. “This creek divides Wyker’s ground from mine. All the rest is measured by links and chains. We agreed to metes and bounds for this because it averages the same, anyhow, and I’d like a stream between Wyker and myself in addition to a barbed wire fence. It gives more space, at least.”
They had followed the rough way only a short distance when Asher, who was nearest the creek, halted. The bank was steep and several feet above the water. 178
“Does anybody else keep sheep around here?” he inquired.
“Not here,” John Jacobs answered.
“Look over there. Isn’t that a sheep?”
Asher pointed to a carcass lying half out of the water on a pile of drift where the stream was narrow, but too deep for fording.