Cass was furious. He promptly tore down the fence to let his cattle and sheep through. Cullison rebuilt it, put up a shack at a point which commanded the approach, and set a guard upon it day and night. Open warfare had ensued, and one of the sheepherders had been beaten because he persisted in crossing the dead line.
Now Cullison was going to put the legal seal on the matter by making final proof on his homestead. Cass knew that if he did so it would practically put him out of business. He would be at the mercy of his foe, who could ruin him if he pleased. Luck would be in a position to dictate terms absolutely.
Nor did it make his defeat any more palatable to Cass that he had brought it on himself by his bad-tempered unneighborliness and by his overreaching disposition. A hundred times he had blacknamed himself for an arrant fool because he had not anticipated the move of his enemy and homesteaded on his own account.
He felt that there must be some way out of the trap if he could only find it. Whenever the thought of eating humble pie to Luck came into his mind, the rage boiled in him. He swore he would not do it. Better a hundred times to see the thing out to a fighting finish.
Taking the broad-rimmed gray hat he found on the rack, Cass passed out of the clubhouse and into the sun-bathed street.
CHAPTER II
LUCK MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plaza where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them—the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county—met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth. But his reign as sheriff had been a terror to lawbreakers. He had made enemies, desperate and unscrupulous ones, who had sworn to wipe him from among the living, and one of these he was now to meet for the first time since the man had stood handcuffed before him, livid with fury, and had sworn to cut his heart out at the earliest chance.