from every section of the Western country. They had a special
grudge against Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable
for the sudden disappearance, about a year before, of their
leader, Buck McKee, a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip.
However, no other leader had arisen equal to that masterful
spirit, and their enmity expressed itself only in such petty
depredations as changing brands on stray cattle from the Bar One
and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of the tongues of young
calves, so that they would be unable to feed properly, and, as a
result, be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy K outfit
would slap its brand on them as mavericks.

Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate Army as
one of Morgan's raiders, and so had received, by popular brevet,
the title of colonel. At the close of the war he had come to
Arizona with his young wife, Josephine, and had founded a home on
the Sweetwater. He was now one of the cattle barons of the great
Southwest. Prosperity had not spoiled him. Careless in his
attire, cordial in his manner, he was a man who was loved and
respected by his men, from the newest tenderfoot to the veteran
of the bunkhouse. His wife, however, was not so highly regarded,
for she had never been able to recognize changes in time or
location and so was in perpetual conflict with her environment.
She attempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the
Arizona plains "stand around" like the house servants of the
Kentucky Bluegrass; and she persisted in the effort to manage her
husband by the feminine artifice of weeping. In days of her
youth and beauty this had been very effective, but now that these
had passed, it was productive only of good-humored raillery from
him, and mirth from the bystanders.