buy winter feed, which was expensive; and a lot of them got the scab
and died; and last year I lost nearly all my lambs at lambing time,
the band being caught out in a storm and being in the wrong place.
Just one thing after another, to break my back. Had trouble about the
range, too. When I started them off this spring, they were down to
seven hundred; and I've been losing some right along from one cause or
another. No lambs, either, this spring, except dead ones. I thought I
could hang on till my luck changed, but losing a hundred head two
weeks ago was the last straw. I'm done now."

"What happened, Stevenson?"

"One of Menocal's herders mixed his flock with my six hundred, did it
deliberately, I'm convinced; there were three thousand head of his.
Billy was tending ours--and Billy is only fourteen, you know. I had
come down here for some supplies and when I returned, I found him
crying. The Mexican had separated the sheep and we were a hundred
short, gone with his, and he would pay no attention to Billy, swearing
he had only his own band. And he drove them away. I went to Menocal,
who was very polite, but he said I must be mistaken as his herders
were all honest men; and I've not got my sheep back, and I'm not
likely to. For that band is now thirty miles away somewhere. No use to
go to court--Menocal owns everything and everybody around here. So I'm
quitting."

"The sheep business isn't all roses, that's certain," Lee Bryant
remarked. "It's hard luck that your band ran down just when the price
of mutton and wool is going up. So you're letting the ranch slide?"

"Yes, I can't pay the mortgage; Menocal would foreclose at once if I