lonesome and tried cattle. Your windmills broke down; your cattle was
stole plumb opprobrious--Mexicans blamed, of course. And the very first
winter the sheep drifted in on you--where no sheep had never blatted
before--and eat you out of house and home."

"I sold out in the spring," reflected Stanley. "I ran two hundred head
of stock up to one hundred and twelve in six months. Go on! Your story
interests me, strangely. I begin to think I was not as big a fool as
I thought I was, and that it was foolish of me to ever think my folly
was--"

Johnson interrupted him.

"Then you bought a bunch of sheep. Son, you can't realize how
great-minded it is of me to overlook that slip of yours! You was out of
the way of every man in the world; you was on your own range, watering at
your own wells--the only case like that on record. And the second dark
night some petulant and highly anonymous cowboys run off your herder and
stampeded your woollies over a bluff."

"Sheep outrages have happened before," observed Stan, rather dryly.

"Sheep outrages are perpetrated by cowmen on cow ranges," rejoined Pete
hotly. "I guess I ought to know. Sheepmen aren't ever killed on their own
ranges; it isn't respectable. Sheepmen are all right in their place--and
hell's the place."

"Peter!" said Stan. "Such langwidge!"

"Wallop! Wallop!" barked Peter, defiant and indignant. "I will say