King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old
snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?" said he. "What
right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"

"I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison,
mildly.

"Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired
yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it
up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got
to git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any
room in it for snoozers. This range you've got your sheep on is mine.
I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a
sheep inside of it when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a
week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men
over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if
I find you here at the same time this is what you'll get."

King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnación. He sighed many
times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the
old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of
Free Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating
upon his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing;
the price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the
storekeeper at Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies,
was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut
him off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him