text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/162

 days; he didn't even know I was around. Tell her I'll put her pony in a livery at Jasper. She can send somebody down after it."

"If I see her I'll tell her, Peck."

"You might tell her, if you want to do me a favor, to send me my and clothes. If she don't want to let go of 'em, case she picks up another man and wants to save dressin' him, tell her I'd request, special extra, that mauve silk shirt with red polka-dots, and that pair of pants with the pencil stripe. She can keep the rest if she's got another man in sight she thinks they'll fit. I'll charge it up to experience and let it go."

"Why, I'll tell her, Peck—I'll be glad to tell her—if I see her. But I don't know when I'll be around her way."

"Any time'll do. She may not be there, anyhow. Last I heard of her she was goin' along with a swarm of sheep to the mountains. I don't wish the old lady any bad luck, but I wouldn't grieve if one of them mountain lions was to jump on her neck."

"Who's been running your business while you've been experimenting out here in the sheep country?"

"Well, that's one of the things the old lady got sore at," Peck confessed. "I ain't got no shop of my own, you see, Rawlins. I work for the man I learnt the trade under, but I'm just the same as one of the firm, been there so long, you know. If I'd 'a' been wise, I'd 'a' married one of his girls—I could 'a' had the pick of three—and made my nest right there in St. Joe. But I didn't, Rawlins."

"No, you didn't, Peck. And now you can't."

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/162


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/163

 "Not till that dan old sheepwoman gits a divorce off of me."

"She'll never do it, Peck. She thinks too much of you, she adores you, I could see that in the dovy look she gave you when you came in from feeding the horses oats that evening—remember?"

"Don't I!" said Peck, with a bale of regret compressed into the words.

"She likes the name of Peck, too, much better than she does Duke. It suggests something—pecks of money, maybe."

"If I could 'a' got my hands on some of it wouldn't I 'a' made a streak!" said Peck.

"Wouldn't you!" said Rawlins, knowing very well that Peck was right for once.

"Well, don't forgit about them pants, will you, Rawlins?"

"No. I'll remember them—pencil stripe, polka-dots."

"That's the shirt," Peck corrected him severely. "I'd better write it down."

"No need. I can make her understand the ones I mean."

"If you happen around there before the old lady gits back Edith she'll hand 'em over to you, everything I left behind me. She's a good little kid; I made a fool of myself when I turned that girl down to marry the old lady. Little old Edith likes me, too. She tries to hide it, but she likes me. I can see it in her eyes."

Peck tinkled on the saucer that held his pudding, drew a heavy breath of regret, sighed.

"Tell her I said I was sorry I done her any wrong,

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/163


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/164

 Rawlins. Tell her if she wants that mauve shirt with the polka-dots to make a waist out of, she can have it. Just send me the pants, tell her. I'll let it go with the pants."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Rawlins said, wondering how much of this was pure simplicity, how much rank egotism.

"She'd have a right to. It cost me seven dollars. I used to be a classy boy among 'em back in St. Joe, I'm a-tellin' you, Rawlins."

"You'll make a hit in St. Joe with that outfit," Rawlins said, viewing the sheep-herder rig, which was far from new, with a grin.

"I'll buy me a hand-me-down suit when I hit Jasper. I can pass that off all right. They think I've been knockin' around out here for my pleasure and so on. They don't know anything about this dan marriage."

"What will you do if she picks up and follows you one of these days, Peck? Which she's likely to do, or I don't know the signs of a strong-minded woman."

"She won't," Peck declared confidently. "She'll never spend that much money chasin' a husband when she can bait 'em right up to her back porch and marry 'em. A new one'd be cheaper than trackin' the old one. That's the way she'll look at it."

"But if she did take a notion to go after you with her gun you'd have to do some lively steppin', Peck."

"Maybe I won't be where she thinks I'll be," Peck said, easy in both mind and conscience. "A firm in Omaha wants me to come up there. I could dodge her easy enough; I'd change my name. Anyhow, if she follers me I'll have her on my ground, she'll be where

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/164


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/165

 I know the ropes. If she thinks she can come to St. Joe and run any of this big boss stuff on me, let her try it. I'd stitch her ears to the back of her neck. You can tell her I said so, too."

"I'll leave it to you," said Rawlins. He got up, reaching into his pocket for his pipe.

"Well, I'm goin' to fly up," Peck announced. "I'm goin' to hit the road early in the morning, then I'll have to lay out one night before I git to Jasper, I guess, won't I? Well, that won't be anything new; I've been sleepin' out like a wolf for three weeks. I tell you, Rawlins, little old St. Joe never looked as good to me as it does right now."

"I never was there," said Rawlins, indifferent to the charms of that town, which pulled so hard on Peck from afar.

"And if I ever marry any more, it won't be a woman that's got sheep on the brain," Peck said, so solemnly that he seemed to be taking an oath. "If I find out she even likes mutton chops before I marry her, it's all off. Well, so long, Rawlins. About four days more and I'll be in the old town once more."

"I wish you luck," said Rawlins, perfunctorily, not caring very much how or where Peck's adventure ended.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/165


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/166

saw no more of Peck, that errant partner of the sheeplady having gone on according to his intention. Let Mrs. Peck learn as she might of her husband's desertion, Rawlins said; he was not going around to the ranch to carry the news.

He was not sorry for her, knowing that it had been pretty much as Peck had said. She had married him to save the expense of a hired man, and he had married her in the lure of that bundle of money which Tippie had complained of as being troublesome to carry around. Both of them had been properly soaked.

Beyond the track of the storm that had driven them to shelter last night, Rawlins found the range parched under the ardent sun of July. It looked as if no rain had fallen in the Dry Wood country for months. The meager grass, standing in bunches, thin-bladed, feeble, was dry; the sage grey and dusty, showing little of the bright green at its tips upon which the sheep thrived, their flesh taking its flavor, making the mutton of the inter-mountain ranges the choicest in all the world.

It looked as if hard days might be ahead for the sheepmen in that country, as Clemmons had predicted, with half their flocks left to eat this sparse grazing

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/166


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/167

 by the Government restrictions shutting them out of the forest reserves. Winter must bring heavy losses unless copious rains fell soon, of which there was no promise in the placid skies.

Rawlins left the road along about noon, to strike across the range to the place where he had left Clemmons on his way down, not expecting to find the old sheepman readily, owing to the constant shifting this dry range would make necessary. Clemmons had figured largely in Rawlins' scheme for taking up land inside Galloway's fence. So much, indeed, depended on Clemmons' co-operation that it amounted almost to a gamble.

Rawlins calculated correctly that Clemmons would be found in the neighborhood of one of his tanks. He rode down a hillside upon the venerable shepherd that evening as he was yelling at the edge of his flock to get it started toward the resting-place for the night.

Clemmons was hobbling lamely along in the dust of his complaining sheep, putting dependence on a stick where he never had depended on anything outside his own bodily and mental strength before. He appeared glad to see Rawlins, although he eyed him questioningly, unable to understand why a man should spend so much time riding up and down the country when he might employ it to so much better purpose looking after sheep.

Rawlins relieved the ancient flockmaster of his task, telling him to go ahead to camp and rest. It was dusk when Rawlins got the sheep huddled in the hollow below the wagon; the old man's fire was twinkling on the hill. Graball was tied to a wagon wheel, a bag

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/167


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/168

 of oats on his nose, when his master went to inquire about water to wash off the day's dust.

Clemmons was sitting on a box beside his little tin stove, assembling the components of supper in coffee-pot, saucepan and skillet, the three utensils which he employed on special occasions such as this. Ordinarily he used but two: coffee-pot and skillet, warming his beans or whatever he might turn out of a can, in the skillet after frying the bacon, the cooked slices meantime laid out neatly across his knee.

There wasn't any water for washing, he said. They were lucky in Dry Wood that summer to have a swig to put down the inside of them once in a while. Dry Wood was no place that season for people who were afraid to carry dirt around on their hides a few months.

"I noticed the range was pretty dry, but I didn't know it was as bad as that," Rawlins said, very much concerned.

"It'll be worse," Clemmons predicted. "We can't expect any rain till September, except these little streaks like I saw pass south of here last night."

"I just got to Lineberger's ahead of it. Rained like fury for half an hour, but it was only a streak, as you say. How are sheep holding up on the range?"

"I ain't lost any yet, but one of my tanks is dry. Sheepmen that's got livin' water'll pull through, but they'll have to feed all winter. This range'll be gnawed to the ground if we don't get rains between now and fall. I don't look for any. There ain't nothing in any of the signs of heaven or earth that promises rain."

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/168


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/169

 "There'll not be much profit in feeding all winter," Rawlins remarked.

"Sheep eat their heads off in three months of winter feedin' in this country, away from the railroad as far as we are," Clemmons agreed, gloomily. "It ain't like it is back in Kansas where hay and corn-fodder grows. There'll be so many feeders throwed on the market this fall them easterners won't be able to take half of 'em. They'll name their own price, and that won't be enough to pay the freight. Might as well let 'em starve on the range as lose 'em that way. That's the way I look at it."

"But fat lambs are going to be worth money along about November," Rawlins said, in his thoughtful, judicial way.

"Nine or ten dollars a hundred, maybe fifteen. I've known 'em to fetch that for the Thanksgivin' and Christmas trade. But mine'll be so lean they won't be fit for anything but glue."

Rawlins let the old man unwind his long bill of complaints against the country, the elements, the sheep business and the unwise men such as he who had put in the best years of their lives to establish it against such overwhelming odds. Speaking of himself, specifically, his bitterness increased. He had stuck to the business so long he had used up all of his hope, he said, and dissipated what little sense he had at the beginning. If it hadn't been that his stock of hope, courage and common horse sense was used up long ago, he'd have quit the struggle and turned somewhere else.

Rawlins heard it for what he knew it to be worth.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/169


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/170

 It required more courage, and vastly greater hope, to stick there than to quit. It had been a big drain on these essential qualities from the very start, and would continue so as long as those dusty, sage-dotted hills sustained their flocks. That would be a long time, as far as the young man was able to foresee, for if nature had worked with any design in shaping that country, sheep had been the purpose when the plans of that fretfully tossed land lay on the trestle-board of creation. It was good for nothing else, but admirable beyond any other place for that.

Clemmons would no more quit the business than he would stop breathing voluntarily. He would die in his old wagon, or propped up against a bush on some hillside, his last effort given to the welfare of his sheep.

"I came by to talk over with you a plan for saving your sheep, and not only saving them, but putting your lambs in condition for market," Rawlins told him, when the old flockmaster appeared to have come to the end of his scroll.

"I heard they had rainmakers in Kansas," Clemmons said with dry sarcasm, "but I didn't reckon they let 'em get loose and wander off."

"You're wrong. I've not got any scheme for making rain. That's one of the sciences I never took up."

"What else in the kingdom of cats is goin' to save the sheep on this range but rain? If you've got any kind of a scheme that ain't got rain back of it, you might as well pass on."

Rawlins told of taking up a claim behind Galloway's fence, on a stream of living water, where the grass was tall and green. He proposed that Clemmons pick

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/170


text:
Page:Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (UKPGA Geo6-10-11-44 qp).pdf/5

 10 & 11

3.—(1) Where after the commencement of this Act any servant or agent of the Crown infringes a patent, or infringes a registered trade mark, or infringes any copyright (including any copyright in a design subsisting under the Patents and Designs Acts, 1907 to 1946), and the infringement is committed with the authority of the Crown, then, subject to the provisions of this Act, civil proceedings in respect of the infringement shall lie against the Crown.

(2) Nothing in the preceding subsection or in any other provision of this Act shall affect the rights of any Government department under section twenty-nine or section fifty-eight A of the Patents and Designs Act, 1907, or the rights of the Minister of Supply under section twelve of the Atomic Energy Act, 1946.

(3) Save as expressly provided by this section, no proceedings shall lie against the Crown by virtue of this Act in respect of the infringement of a patent, in respect of the infringement of a registered trade mark, or in respect of the infringement of any such copyright as is mentioned in subsection (r) of this section.

4.—(1) Where the Crown is subject to any liability by virtue of this part of this Act, the law relating to indemnity and contribution shall be enforceable by or against the Crown in respect of the liability to which it is so subject as if the Crown were a private person of full age and capacity.

(2) Without prejudice to the effect of the preceding subsection, Part II of the Law Reform (Married Women and Tortfeasors) Act, 1935 (which relates to proceedings against, and contribution between, joint and several tortfeasors) shall bind the Crown.

(3) Without prejudice to the general effect of section one of this Act, the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act, 1945 (which amends the law relating to contributory negligence) shall bind the Crown.

5.—(1) The provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1940, which limit the amount of the liability of the owners of ships shall, with any necessary modifications, apply for the purpose of limiting the liability of His Majesty in respect of His Majesty’s ships; and any provision of the said Acts which, relates to or is ancillary to or consequential on the provisions so applied shall have effect accordingly.

(2) Without prejudice to the provisions of the preceding subsection, where a ship is built at any port or place within His Majesty’s dominions, and His Majesty is interested in her by reason of the fact that she is built by or on behalf of or to the order of His Majesty in right of His Government in the United Kingdom, the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 Rh


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/171

 up bodily—wagon, flock, dogs and all, work over to the fence, and leave the rest of it to him. Rawlins proposed to take the sheep at that point, drive them to his homestead and care for them on the usual arrangement of half the increase, with the altogether unusual stipulation that half the profit from the sale of the present crop of imperiled lambs be paid to him for his work of breaking down sheep limit and saving the flock.

Clemmons heard him through without comment. If he was surprised to learn of the young man's intention to homestead beyond sheep limit he did not indicate it in his dusty, hard-whiskered face.

"No, I'd ruther let 'em die in peace here on the range than have 'em murdered in there," he said.

"I'll have the United States Government behind me; I've got it behind me," Rawlins said.

"But Galloway is a standin' in between," Clemmons said. "They'd murder my sheep and they'd murder you, and no more recourse on 'em for one than the other. But if you pull out a gun and plug one of them fellers they'll hang you higher than Samson ever hung his hat. No, son, there ain't no salvation for me in that scheme."

The flockmaster's stand put a crimp in Rawlins' plans. He had worked along on the belief, unfounded except on Clemmons' complaints and gloomy forecast, that the old man would be glad to stock him up with at least two or three hundred sheep for the venture into the rich grazing-lands inside the fence. For Rawlins believed it would be a safe venture. Galloway

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/171


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/172

 would not go to any severe measures to dislodge him, he believed, once he saw he was not a speculator.

If the fence-riders began throwing lead, they'd get lead thrown back at them. Rawlins had come provided with the means for protecting himself on his homestead. And the Government stood behind him. A man could go a long way on that assurance.

"You don't seem to get it through your head that Galloway's the Gover'ment around here," Clemmons complained. "The only cure for you will be to go up agin that man and his outfit once—just once. That'll be plenty, that'll cure you if it don't kill you, as the widder woman said. I don't want to see a bright young feller like you go wrong when he might as well go right. Take a band of my sheep and run 'em out here where they'll be safe from everything but the wolves and the weather, and I'll learn you the business as well as I can, but I wouldn't even give you a sheepskin to sleep on inside of Jim Galloway's fence. I wouldn't even sell 'em to you, for that'd be the same as robbin' the dead."

Rawlins said he was sorry, but determined to go ahead. If he couldn't get sheep he'd go without sheep, and buy them when he was able. There was no way the Government officials in that State could evade their responsibility to him, even if Galloway did own them. They were obliged to protect him in his rights, and his rights were undeniable. What warrant did Clemmons have, or anybody around there have, for saying Galloway's men would murder anybody who tried to homestead inside the fence? Had anybody ever tried to do it?

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/172


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/173

 Sheepmen had tried to run their flocks in there, in times past, Clemmons said. Not right around there; farther south. Two or three had been killed, and nothing done to the killers. That was enough for most people. Around there they kept their hands off that fence, for they knew Galloway, and the extent of his power.

"My opinion is he's simply got you all buffaloed," Rawlins told him.

"Go up agin him, then," said Clemmons, grimly.

"I'm going," Rawlins replied, quietly, firmly; no brag or bluster about him.

For—a dry summer, Clemmons was suffering a "powerful misery in the j'ints," he said. This led him off on a discourse concerning "j'ints," and the necessity of brass ones in a sheepman, so they would not corrode. He berated the discomforts of that life and its small rewards, dismissing the homestead and its perils as a distasteful, at least a profitless, subject upon which there remained no more to be said.

"If I was a young man," he said, "I'd go back east and get me a good eighty in Iowa and marry me a woman and settle down. A man can see life and enjoy the world back in that country. Here he's bound down by sheep, unless he's a herder or a shearer, or one of them loose-footed boys, free to pick up his bundle and light out whenever he feels like it.

"What good does money do a sheepman if he makes it? He don't dast to turn his back on his flock a week without something goin' wrong that wipes out all he's made. He's got to stay with 'em, and nuss 'em day and night, year in and year out. Other men can go to

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/173


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/174

 town and take a little toot for a week or two once in a while, but a sheepman can't. He's a slave to them nigger-headed beasts."

Rawlins enlarged on his designs of becoming a sheepman in the country he was about to open, but without moving the old man from his avowed intention of keeping his feet clear of Galloway's domain. In the end Rawlins was forced to the conclusion that all the talk Clemmons had made on a previous occasion about becoming a big sheepman if he had room to expand was nothing but gab. He had weathered it there in his small way all those years, and there he would stick, no matter if the earth were spread before him and the best of it offered for his taking.

There was no better place for sheep than the well-watered homestead he had chosen; Rawlins believed. It lay in a little valley where the offrun of rain from the hills soaked deep into the earth, storing moisture against drought such as the range was suffering at that time. The grass would be ready to mow now. He considered the feasibility of harvesting the crop and selling it to the hard-pressed sheepmen the coming winter.

That would call for an outlay of more money for machinery and help than he could command, after making such improvements as the law required on his claim. His haymaking would have to be confined to scythe and rake that summer, in which primitive fashion he could put up enough to make Graball comfortable. He'd have to run a double wire around that hayland of his to keep Galloway's stock out of it. There must be close to a hundred acres fit for mowing,

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/174


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/175

 he estimated. That would take a heavy outlay for wire, granting that he could cut posts in the hills on a permit from the forestry supervisor.

So Rawlins sat with the old flockmaster at the tail of the sheep-wagon, thinking and planning for the—future in what he still thought of as that big white spot of unrevealed opportunities on the map. Only there was one persistent little oasis in it now which no amount of adversity or opposition ever should erase and throw back again into the unchartered desert of white. He saw it all as clearly as if the labor of twenty years lay behind him. There was his oasis, his flocks ranging out from it, his prosperity centered there, all as plain to his far-leaping vision as a thing accomplished.

In fact, there was nothing more than a half-section of what the United States Government designated semi-arid agricultural and grazing land, lying inside a guarded fence that must restrict his coming and going for a long time to come, as it had hampered the free movement of people in that section for many years in the past. Overhead there were stars as bright as youth's untarnished hopes; around him the huddled hills of the sheeplands, silent as a sleeping flock. And there facing him in the gloom of starlight sat old Al Clemmons, a man who had remained little to balance, in the arbitrary apportionment of fate, it seemed, the ambitions of a man who was determined to become big.

The situation did not have its warning for Rawlins, confidently extending his plans, comfortably designing for the homestead inside the fence, for youth believes, always has believed, always shall believe, that excep-

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/175


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/176

 tions will be made for it, opening the way to its triumph. It is that sanguine confidence of youth that saves the civilization of human kind.

Clemmons was not able to get out of the wagon next morning. If Rawlins had not been there it would have been a sorry day for the old man, for he had spun out the thread of his endurance against his pangs and miseries so long he hadn't the strength left in him to bend his stiffened joints and spread the sheep out while the dew was on the sage.

Rawlins volunteered to stand by until the crippled flockmaster could hire a man to follow his flock. Perhaps the young man was not entirely unselfish in the business; maybe he hoped the old man's affliction might turn out to be his own profit. It might work Clemmons round to contributing at least part of his flock to the design for breaking down sheep limit and opening that land to the oppressed.

Clemmons said if he had a rattlesnake to render down and rub the grease on his joints he would make a speedy recovery. It never had failed in the past, and he was without that specific remedy now only because he had not been able to find a snake.

That was another indication of what the Dry Wood country was coming to, Clemmons said. Time was when he was as limber as any rattlesnake that ever crawled, and look at him now! Tied up in the wagon, flat on his back, not worth the baking powder in his biscuits, and all because that country had degenerated to that low plane, under the crowding of big sheepmen and the fencing-up by land hogs, that a good, decent rattlesnake was no longer to be found.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/176


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/177

would have been a big sheepman years ago, Rawlins believed, if unsparing driving of himself, rigorous parsimony and avid willingness to profit by the friendly services of somebody who pitied his plight could have advanced him. The old rascal had no intention of hiring a herder; that was as plain as the burrs in his whiskers after Rawlins had been substituting for him three or four days.

He'd be all right to-morrow; there was no use paying out money to a man for doing something one was able to do for himself. Just stick around with the sheep a day or two longer, and he would be all right. Coal oil was a pretty good second for snake grease; it was bringing him around in fine shape.

Just help him along a day or two more, then, the old man begged. It was only play for a young man like Rawlins, and the experience would be worth money to him when he came to running sheep of his own. A man had to learn all sides of that business, the dry side as well as the wet. Rawlins would learn a lot about the habits and needs of sheep in a dry time like that. The old man stressed the benefits of the education so hard Rawlins believed he would put in a bill for it at the end.

Between the rest and the kerosene Clemmons lim-

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/177


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/178

 bered up in eight or nine days enough to resume the care of—his flock. Rawlins' sympathy for him had played out long before that. He was just a hard-rined old grafter who would spraddle out over as much land as Galloway if he had the chance. But he stopped with him a day longer to see that he did not relapse.

Clemmons softened up a little in gratitude for Rawlins' help toward the end, to the extent of revising his position on permitting his sheep to go into the country beyond sheep limit on any condition. He removed that restriction in the case of fifty old ewes and an ancient, tottering ram, which he offered to sell Rawlins for the price of breeding stock. That was as far as his generosity went. Rawlins saddled Graball and went on his way, poorer by ten days in time than when he came.

There was nothing to be hoped for from Clemmons in sheep; that was settled for good. Rawlins wondered if the other small sheepmen who had drifted up against the barbed-wire barrier were as flighty on the subject of going inside the fence as Clemmons. He hoped they were. As long as he must go in there and start things, he was entitled to some handicap.

Rawlins had taken an early start, thinking it would be well to ride over to the ranch for a passing visit to Mrs. Peck and Edith Stone, seeing they were to be his nearest neighbors. It might be possible to negotiate with Mrs. Peck for another horse, and one of the numerous wagons he had seen around her place.

Mrs. Peck might even be engaged in his venture to the extent of stocking him to a little band of sheep, although he doubted the likelihood of that. She was

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/178


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/179

 a cautious woman who owned several miles of unfailing water. Still, the dry range and short grazing, with the prospect of a winter's feeding ahead of her, might move her to take a chance.

Speculating on these things, Rawlins rode along, laying his course for the ranch, which he calculated to reach conveniently about noon. He had covered about half the distance when he ran into a scattered band of sheep whose shepherd was nowhere in sight. There was nothing strange in that, for the shepherd, as Rawlins knew, might be hiding behind a bush or lying in a hollow, staring at him like some creature of the wilds.

Those solitary men developed queer streaks frequently. He had heard, long before coming to the range, that sheep-herders commonly developed a mild type of melancholy insanity. Rawlins wondered if it might be a philosophic contempt for the garrulity of other people, the outgrowth of contemplation in their close association with nature, which runs all its business on the silent plan.

When Rawlins came to the top of the next hill and looked down into a little valley where a twisting streak of green willows marked a living stream, he saw the shepherd sitting by a crude shelter of canvas and bushes, engaged in what appeared to be the unbelievable task of preparing breakfast. Dinner it could not be, for it was then only about half-past nine. Here was a sheep-herder worth meeting, Rawlins thought. He proceeded on down the hill, lips drawn back in his way that looked like a desperate grin, whistling a quick little tune between his teeth.

Dowell Peck rose up in flapping garments like a

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/179


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/180

 scarecrow in a garden, a stewpan in his hand, and shouted a delighted greeting as Graball came skating down the steep hillside behind the tattered canvas spread over a bush which formed Peck's tent.

"Well, of all men!" said Rawlins, greatly surprised.

"Yes, it's me," Peck admitted, in that fatuous way a man does when he would deny the obvious fact if he felt there was any chance of making it go.

"But I thought you'd jumped the range, I thought you were back in St. Joe listening to the music of a sewing machine by this time, Peck. How come? What happened?"

"I thought at first you was a bear comin' at me down that hill," said Peck, evading the friendly inquiry. "Did you see anything of a gang of stews over that way?"

"Yes, they're right over the hill. Where's your dog?"

"Darned if I know," Peck said, looking around for the animal with hostile eye; "him and me don't mix. He thinks he's boss of them sheep, tries to go over my head every move I make. If I had a gun I'd plug him, and plug him right!"

Rawlins dismounted, Graball standing docilely by after turning his wise eye around to mark the entirely denuded and stripped condition of that particular spot. Peck doubtless was not ranging the sheep very far from his camp. They had gnawed the bushes to the wood, the grass to the ground.

"So Mrs. Peck is making a sheepwoman's man out of you after all?"

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/180


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/181

 "You see me," said Peck, disparaging the exhibit to a most contemptible object, indeed.

"You changed your mind and came back? I thought you would, somehow."

"Did I?" Peck challenged, looking up from his overheated bacon, which was already black around the curled edges before it was half done. "Well, you've got another guess comin'. Dang this cookin' out here in this blame country! Nothing to cook but sowbelly and flopjakes, and canned beans warmed over in the grease. I'm so full of canned beans I spill 'em when I gape."

"Kind of early for dinner, unless you got your sheep out before daylight?"

"It ain't dinner; it's breakfast," Peck corrected, as Rawlins knew he must if he told the truth. "You don't ketch me gittin' up at daylight to wake up a bunch of stews and spread 'em out with their dang noses the right way accordin' to the wind—either with it or agin it, danged if I remember which—but the old lady's particular on that point as I used to be about my neckties before I come to this dad-blamed country.

"What the dickens do I care which way they ought to point in the wind? Head or tail, it's all the same to me. If they ain't got sense enough to turn around the right way if I start 'em wrong, I say let 'em go to the doo—let 'em go to hell!"

"So she followed you to Jasper and grabbed you before you could get your ticket to St. Joe, heh? Tough luck, Peck. But it may work out for the best, after all."

Peck took his smoking skillet from the fire, shook

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/181


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/182

 the charred pieces of bacon as if he intended to throw them like dice and read his fortune, emptied them into the stewpan and reached around for his can of beans.

"Eatin' out of a pan, like a dog," he said, lifting his reproachful eyes, his one-time trim and elegant moustache looking ragged and cindery, a growth of reddish, cow-colored beard on his gaunt cheeks and chin, his hair long around his ears. "No, she didn't foller me, Rawlins. She rode over to a ranch where they've got a telephone and called up the sheriff down at Jasper. She told him to arrest a man ridin' such and such a horse with her brand on it, and let it go at that."

"Oh, I see."

"Yeh. She made out she didn't know it was me on that horse. When she come after that blamed skate I was peekin' through them bars. 'Oh, it's my husband,' she says, when the sheriff led her in to take a squint at the thief. 'I thought he was out on the range with a band of sheep. Let him go, Mr. Sheriff—it's my mistake.' That's what she had the gall to do."

"That's hard sleddin', Peck. But it was a pretty shrewd way of keeping a husband; you'll have to hand her that."

"Yeah, took all the money—my own personal, private money—the sheriff frisked off of me, and wouldn't give me back a cent. She said I could either come back here and go to work, or go to the pen for stealin' that horse. It was a bluff, but it worked. I didn't know the law then, but I know it now, and if I could lay my hand on anything else around that ranch I'd show her! Riley—you know Riley, the lawyer that's herdin' for her? Riley he told me the law. A

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/182


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/183

 married man can't rob his wife, nor a married woman can't rob her husband. What belongs to one belongs to the other. If I'd 'a' knew the law then I'd 'a' told her to go to the doodle."

"I don't know, but I expect Riley's right. It sounds like he ought to be right, anyhow. So if you can raise the wind you'll strike for St. Joe again?"

"You watch me. Ain't that a h—a dickens of a mess for a man to have to eat and call it a breakfast? Hog grease and beans! I'm so fed up on hog I leak lard when I git a bug in my eye. Yeah, she said she was goin' to make a sheepman out of me. Never expected I'd be as good as that warp-faced feller she had ahead of me—I wish she had him now, I wish to the mighty he'd raise up from the dead and come back—but she'd make a kind of one out of me or bust her hame-strings a tryin'. She can bust 'em, and she can bust herself, wide open, for all the sheepman she'll ever make out of me!"

"How long does she calculate it'll take, or did she say?"

"She said after I'd run around with a bunch of stews two years I'd begin to see some sense, and then maybe she could trust me. You can see how she trusts me now—not even a sheep-wagon to hang up in at night like them hired herders have, and no grub but that you see there in that blame sack. She's a-scairt if I had a wagon I might hitch myself up to it and pull out, I guess. Well, I wouldn't try to give her the dodge that way any more. When I go next time I'll go with some money funds in my jeans. I may be green, but I ain't as simple as I look. I've got a line on something, and

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/183


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/184

 when I'm good and ready to go next time I'll burn up the road."

"You'll think better of it after a winter on the range, Peck. They say it takes a winter to break a man in and make him stick."

"I don't see why she didn't marry Tippie," Peck complained, passing over the probabilities of the future. "She trusts him with a roll of money as big as my leg and never asks him for the change. I'd have to give her a bond before she'd let me look at a dime."

"I expect it's because Tippie knew she bore down pretty hard on husbands, Peck. He's been around here a long time, you know."

"Yeah, he was wise, he knew her game. If I'd 'a' been smart I'd 'a' stuck to that little Edith. I didn't think she had money enough to make it worth a feller's time, but what's money? Here I am the husband of a woman with money up to her neck, and me eatin' hog and beans when I ought to be trimmin' a T-bone. Well, I can do that on my little old thirty a week back in St. Joe. But I'll be sway-backed before I ever hit that old town agin, if I can't turn a trick on that old woman."

"If my opinion's worth anything in the case, Peck, I'll bet you turn out a better sheepman than Duke ever was. She'll be so proud of you before your two years are up that you'll be the delegate runnin' around the range with the big wad of money payin' off the hands. My tip to you is, stick; hang on till the ewes come home, seeing there ain't any cows."

"They wouldn't come home, Rawlins," Peck said in reproachful, sad voice, "no more than good luck'll

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/184


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/185

 ever come to me on this range. Leave a bunch of them sheep to find their way back to the place where they bunked last night and they'd end up down in Mexico."

"You seem to be learning their ways, anyhow."

"Yes, I'm learnin' more about sheep every day than I ever suspicioned of 'em. One thing I know for sure, and that is you can't starve 'em. The old lady put me off here about a week ago with this bunch. She said I'd have to hunt up a new place for my camp in about three days, as they'd clean everything out around here in that time. I thought if I could starve the dang sapheads she'd throw a fit and fire me, but I tell you, Rawlins, it can't be done. They eat the leaves off of the sage, then they eat the limbs. I look for 'em to begin on the main stems of the danged dwarfy stuff to-morrow, and then go after the roots. Well, where're you headin' for, Rawlins? What's on your mind?"

"I've taken up a homestead north of your ranch a few miles on a little creek. I'm on my way up there now."

"Say, you mean back of that fence where you and Tippie tried to git my gizzard shot out?"

"We didn't have any such design as that on you, Peck; we only wanted to throw a little scare into you. But there's where it is."

"Yes, and it'd been better for me if your dang scheme'd worked out. But say! If I had me a claim up there I could shake that old woman to a fare—you-well, couldn't I? She wouldn't dast to throw her leg over that fence. I'd be as safe as gold money. Say, Rawlins! what do you think of me drivin' that bunch of stews up in there? That'd put a crimp in the old

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/185


text:
Page:Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (UKPGA Geo6-10-11-44 qp).pdf/6

 Rh

to 1940, which limit the amount of the liability of the owners of ships shall, with any necessary modifications, apply for the purpose of limiting the liabilities in respect of that ship of His Majesty, her builders, her owners, and any other persons interested in her; and any provision of the said Acts which relates to or is ancillary to or consequential on the provisions so applied shall have effect accordingly.

This subsection shall have effect only in respect of the period from and including the launching of the ship until the time of her completion, and shall not in any event have effect in respect of any period during which His Majesty is not so interested in the ship as aforesaid. In relation to a ship built to the order of His Majesty in right of His Government in the United Kingdom, the time of her completion shall be taken for the purposes of this subsection to be the time when His Majesty, acting in His said right, finally takes delivery of her under the building contract.

(3) Where any ship has been demised or sub-demised by His Majesty acting in right of His Government in the United Kingdom, then, whether or not the ship is registered for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1940, the provisions of those Acts which limit the amount of the liability of the owners of ships shall, in respect of the period for which the demise or sub-demise continues, apply, with any necessary modifications, for the purpose of limiting the liabilities in respect of the ship of any person entitled to her by demise or sub-demise; and any provision of the said Acts which relates to or is ancillary to or consequential on the provisions so applied shall have effect accordingly.

This subsection shall be deemed always to have had effect.

(4) Where by virtue of any arrangement between His Majesty and some other person (not being a servant of His Majesty) that other person (hereinafter referred to as “the manager”) is entrusted with the management of any of His Majesty’s ships, the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1940, which limit the amount of the liability of the owners of ships shall apply for the purpose of limiting the manager’s liability in respect of the ship while so entrusted; and any provision of the said Acts which relates to or is ancillary to or consequential on the provisions so applied shall have effect accordingly.

This subsection shall be deemed always to have had effect.

(5) Where for the purposes of any enactment as applied by this section it is necessary to ascertain the tonnage of any ship, and that ship is not registered for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1940, the tonnage of the ship shall be taken for the purposes of that enactment to be the tonnage arrived at by:—
 * (a) ascertaining her tonnage in accordance with section seventy-seven of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, and

4


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/186

 girl! Yeah, and I could drive 'em out on the other side and sell 'em, and raise myself a stake. What do you think? Wouldn't that put a crimp in her?"

"It sure would," Rawlins agreed, thinking that Peck must be desperate in his dissatisfaction to consider so eagerly that plan of escape from his wife's tyranny.

"But I don't suppose I could git by with it!" Peck sighed. "I wouldn't have any grub in there, for one thing, and I expect she'd stand sheriffs all around that fence waitin' for me to come out. That's about what she'd do. They couldn't do anything to me, but they'd grab the sheep off of me before I could drive 'em over to the railroad. I guess I'll have to stick to my other scheme to put a crimp in that old lady. If there was any other woman around here I could run off with, derned if I wouldn't do it. Not Edith; I wouldn't think of runnin' off with Edith, but it'd serve the old woman right if I did."

"That's noble of you, Peck," Rawlins said, his sarcasm wasted on the shepherd's peaked head, where it split like a raindrop on the edge of an axe. "But you don't cut very much of a figure right now, to be honest with you. I don't believe you could run off with the greasiest sheepman's wife in this country."

"If I had a shave and a haircut, and my other hat and that pair of pencil-striped pants," Peck regretted, sighing as if his heart were wrapped in the gay garments and put away in moth-balls to wait the completion of his education in sheep. "I don't suppose I'll ever set eyes on them clothes of mine any more. Well, if I can't put over what I've got lined up, I'll hop a freight and burn my way to St. Joe."

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/186


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/187

 "It's hard on you, Peck, and it's going to be harder when it gets twenty below along in the winter, but she'll give you a wagon before then. You may think she's cruel, but all she's trying to do is reform you from your town habits and make a man of you according to her own pattern. If she can put it through you'll be the one to win. Pull up your puckerin' string and stick to it. Just think of all the money Tippie brought out that time for current expenses, and only skinned the top of her pile."

"I am thinkin' of it, Rawlins," goggling up with his frog eyes knowingly, as if to say there was a lot in the back of his head on that subject which he was keeping to himself.

"I'll be riding on then, and leave you to your sheep and pleasant dreams. Is Mrs. Peck over at the ranch?"

"Maybe she is. I ain't seen her since she kicked me off down here and drove away. She'll be around somewhere, Rawlins; nothing ain't goin' to happen to her. It's her husbands that gits caught between two rocks in the crick and drownded. Nothing like that's ever goin' to happen to her."

Rawlins wished the discontented shepherd well, and went on his way. Peck was getting nothing more than he deserved, or would deserve if he never should succeed in breaking his bondage and escaping back to his lamented St. Joe. Peck came shouting after him as Rawlins was mounting the hill, waving his hat.

"Say, Rawlins," Peck panted, "it just struck me. Sell me that horse, will you, Rawlins? I'll give you

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/187


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/188

 my note for any price you ask, and that's as good as gold money. I'll take it up the minute I hit St. Joe."

Rawlins grinned at Peck's impetuosity, shaking his head in denial.

"Not because I don't trust you, Peck. You'd pay me all right. I need the horse, I'm used to him and don't know where I could get another one for the price I'd have to make, between friends, to you."

"You don't need to let the price stand in the way," Peck argued. "Double it—I'll pay any money to git away from that old girl."

"Besides, I think I'd be doing you an injury instead of a favor if I sold you the horse, Peck. This is going to be the making of you if you'll see it through—things will begin to look different to you in two or three months from now. There's a whole lot of generosity and kindness in your wife if you take her right. Show a willing spirit, Peck, and hop to it."

Peck wilted as the animation of his big and sudden scheme died. He looked reproachfully at Rawlins, as a dying man might look when fixing the guilt of his death on the one who had laid him low; turned back to his camp with slow, spiritless step, his shoulders seeming not much wider than a clothespin under the brim of his broad-winged hat.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/188


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/189

was feeling his oats in those days, which time was something more than three weeks after his parting with Peck on the range. It looked as if his bold invasion of Galloway's pasture had bluffed them.

Mrs. Peck had done better than sell him an old wagon and a horse to work with wall-eyed, voracious Graball: she had gone on a spree of generosity, actuated by selfish calculation, to be sure, and supplied the adventurer a good wagon and team. That was her contribution to the opening of sheep limit, she said. If Rawlins made it stick, he could pay her for the outfit in his own time; if he should lose them in the unequal battle against the forces of the mighty, she would check the account off her book.

More than that Mrs. Peck proposed. If he could make his bluff of Government backing—she could not see it in the light of anything but a bluff—go over with Galloway's fence-riders and hold down his homestead for three months, she would let him take in a band of five hundred sheep to run on shares of the increase and shearing, which was considerably more generous than the established rule. The wool of the original flock always went to the owner under the rule of the range.

Rawlins had set out with his wagon and team,

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/189


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/190

 Graball trotting beside the near horse, tools and such farming implements as Mrs. Peck could lend him in the box. He had made a streak for the spot where the Government surveyors' witness stone marked a township line, which was a public highway under the law, cut the wire fence, pulled up one post, making a gap about as wide as the ordinary county road. From there he had gone to his homestead, left his tools and driven across the forbidden country to Lost Cabin.

He had to cut the fence again on that side, of course, to reach town, but it was such an unexpected event for anybody to cross there with a wagon that his breach went undiscovered by the guards, at least until he had returned safely with his load of lumber and supplies.

So there he was that bright summer day, established on his homestead, a little box house, with a window as big as a handkerchief, a through its comb, all finished, and several tons of hay cut and stacked against the needs of winter. Nobody had molested him, nobody had visited him.

While he was several miles inside sheep limit, he knew the fence-riders must have followed his wagon tracks and looked down on his activities from the surrounding hills. They knew he was there. Why they had not come with notice to clear out he did not understand. Maybe they were waiting instructions from headquarters; perhaps lying for him when it should become necessary to go to Lost Cabin for mail and groceries.

In all those days since coming into that hole and pulling it in after him, as Rawlins considered the step

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/190


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/191

 he had taken, he had not heard a word from the outside. There might be wars and disasters making havoc in the world for all he knew. That was complete isolation, compared to which a sheep-herder's life was one of social gaiety.

A herder saw the camp mover once in a while, and heard the gossip of the range; he got the old newspapers and magazines in his turn as they circulated from wagon to wagon, and occasionally a wanderer came by, stopping at his camp for the night. Inside Galloway's fence nobody roamed. Herders and shearers on the go from job to job made the long detour that everybody else in that country took to get to Lost Cabin. The fear of a trespasser's fate was heavy over them all, far and near.

Edith was not cutting across the fenced land any more, her aunt having put a stern prohibition on such daring enterprise. Once in two weeks, Rawlins knew, she rode the thirty-five miles going and thirty-five miles return in a day to get the mail, and such little luxuries as salted peanuts and chocolates as a sort of compensative premium. He was only seven miles from the post office, in a straight line, quite an improvement over the condition of the bluffed and subjugated sheepmen on the outside. And his mail would be accumulating. He must saddle Graball one of these days and go after it.

That was his thought that morning as he tinkered around his haystacks completing a wire fence to keep off such stray animals as might wander around in the night or when he was away from home. It might be as well to go over that afternoon, for he was beginning

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/191


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/192

 to have a feeling that weeds were growing behind his ears, he had been cut off from news of the world so long.

He should have gone to the ranch, also, long before that, to let Mrs. Peck know her wagon and team were still safe in his possession, and that he was holding down his own in peace and quiet. That would be his day's work after he had made the fence snug: a trip to the post office, and go on to the ranch after coming home. There would be a big bundle of papers and magazines; they would take the edge off his lonesome, ness for days to come.

Looking ahead to that cheerful prospect, Rawlins worked on with wire stretcher and hammer, lips pressed down hard against his teeth in that queer, rather senseless whistling grin of his, the little tune he had learned to whistle that way from a Scotchman when a boy coming through his parted teeth as merrily as the pipes ever trilled it in old Caledonia. Thus occupied in thought and hand he did not hear the visitor until he rounded the little stackyard suddenly and gave him a friendly "Good-morning."

Rawlins was more pleased than startled by the sudden appearance of the man on horseback, for he was a mild-mannered person with a pleasant voice and undoubtedly friendly intention. He rode up, leaned over, offered his hand, smiling amiably.

"Hewitt is my name," he said.

"Rawlins is mine. Glad to meet you, Mr. Hewitt. Won't you get down and stretch your legs?"

"Oh, no," Hewitt returned, in the easy, comfortable way of a man who had not come far and hadn't far

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/192


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/193

 to go. "That's a purty little bunch of hay you've got. How long have you been here?"

"A little over three weeks."

Rawlins was wondering where Hewitt had come from. He couldn't recall having heard his name mentioned at Mrs. Peck's ranch, where the affairs of everybody within forty miles were discussed. He was a clean, lean man of forty or a little more, his khaki overalls inside his laced boots. He was not wearing spurs, he carried no gun, nothing but the usual little roll done up in a slicker behind his saddle.

"Looks like you're preparing to stay a while," Hewitt remarked, with apparent appreciation, looking around the place, lively interest in his keen, alert face, which was brown and bearded.

"Yes, I've homesteaded here," Rawlins replied, thinking Hewitt looked like a geology professor he used to have.

"That so?" said Hewitt. He put his hand to the cantle, twisting around in the saddle with freshened interest. "Well. Aren't you a little—that is to say a trifle—premature?"

"No, not so very. I'm the first one in here, I guess, but the country's been open to homestead a long time—ever since it was surveyed."

Hewitt shook his head in denial of that, urbane as ever, even smiling as he made the correction.

"It would be open to homestead ordinarily, but Senator Galloway has a big block of it leased from the Government. His lease has several years to run yet."

"Are you connected with Senator Galloway's—enterprise?"

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/193


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/194

 "Yes," Hewitt replied cheerfully, "I'm superintendent of this ranch."

"Well then, Mr. Hewitt, I'd just as well tell you there is no record of a lease between Senator Galloway and the Government covering this land. I had my congressman look into the matter thoroughly before I entered this homestead. There is no record of any lease whatever."

Rawlins spoke of his congressman in that easy, proprietary fashion common to the intelligent American voter when discussing those whom he sends to legislatures to bargain off his rights in pacts and compromises and personal ambitions. It was as of something he had under his hand, some little thing to roll like a pencil or flip away like the burnt end of a match. It sounds intimate, consequential, bombastic, and deceives nobody at all.

"Is that so?" said Hewitt, evincing surprise. "He must have gone into the wrong office, or got hold of the wrong records. The senator's right to this land is incontestible—but we're not going to have any argument over that."

"I hope not, Mr. Hewitt."

"Not at all," said Hewitt heartily. "You're an unusual type of man to be staking out your life homesteading in this country, Mr. Rawlins. A young man of your intelligence and education could get a whole lot more out of life, it seems to me, in some other pursuit. What was your business before you came out here, if you'll allow me to inquire?"

"Certainly. I used to ride the range in western Kansas. Later on I was editor of a little one-horse

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/194


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/195

 weekly in the short grass country—they call it the golden belt now, the wheat belt, you know."

"So, you're from Kansas? That's a great State, remarkable people. Editor of a paper? Well, that's more like it. There's about where I can see you—editor of a paper. You fit that job, but you don't belong here in this sheep country, especially on a lonesome little homestead. You're not the type of man to make it go, Rawlins, even if you had the legal right to take up this land. What was your object? Not a kind of a—holdup, was it?"

"Not at all, sir," Rawlins replied stiffly.

"No offense intended, Rawlins. That happens; there's a class of men who go around and squat on leased land with the premeditated intention of holding the lessee up to get them off without going to law. It's cheaper, sometimes, and saves a lot of bother, especially where a man doesn't want to shoot anybody up. I didn't think you looked like that kind of a man, but you never can tell."

"My intentions are honest, then, as far as that goes," Rawlins said, passing it off with a laugh. "I've been figuring on this country a good while—long before I left Kansas—planning on going into the sheep business. That's why I picked this location to homestead. There's plenty of water here."

"Yes, it's a good location for a sheep ranch," Hewitt agreed, not with much warmth. His manner implied, in fact, that it was an excellent spot for Senator Galloway to establish a sheep ranch, but a very poor place for Rawlins.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/195


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/196

 "Have you bought your stock?" Hewitt inquized, shrewdly interested.

"Not yet."

"That's lucky." Hewitt was genuinely relieved, it appeared. "I'd hate to see you throw away your investment. Frankly, Rawlins, we can't let you run sheep in here, or stay in here at all. If we let the bars down to one we'd be overrun with farmers and sheepmen in a month. You can see that as well as anybody."

"I don't want to have a row with you folks over it, Mr. Hewitt, but I know I'm acting in my legal rights, and I'm going to stay. We might as well come to that first as last, since you've served notice on me to get out. I've entered this homestead, paid my fee, and have my receipt from the land agent at Jasper. Here it is."

"I'll waive the reading of it, Mr. Rawlins," Hewitt laughed, with a graceful gesture. "That fool feller down at Jasper has made a mistake. There's nothing to it, Rawlins; it won't stick. We've got this land under lease, and of course we'll defend our rights. You'd expect us to do that, you'd do that under the same circumstances yourself."

"Exactly, Mr. Hewitt. That's what I'm going to do. If Senator Galloway has a lease, let him bring an action against me for trespass, or unlawful occupation and retention of his land. If he can produce his lease in court, I'll back down as gracefully as a badly mistaken man can back, but on no other terms."

"We don't do things that way in this country, Rawlins. You can see where that would lead us. If we go to lawing with one squatter a hundred of them

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/196


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/197

 would rush us while we're waiting the court's decision. We'd never get anywhere. But we'll give you better terms than we would another man in your shoes, seeing that you've come from a long way off and been misled. We'll let you take your improvements out, and we'll buy your hay, although we could prosecute you, when it comes to talking of law, for coming in here and cutting it. I'll send a couple of men over to help you tear down your shanty and load it on your wagon, if you want me to."

"When the United States Government says it has made a mistake in granting me homestead entry to this land, I'll move the house, Mr. Hewitt. Otherwise, it's there to stay. And I haven't any hay to sell. I'll need that for my sheep next winter."

"You're a kind of a brash young feller, Rawlins, but that's because you don't realize the hopelessness of the thing you're up against here. These sheepmen around here can tell you what a man can expect if he tries to put anything like this over on Galloway. You'd better take a couple of days and inquire around."

"I've heard all about it. I knew what to expect when I came in here."

"We've got all the sheep this pasture will carry in here now, Rawlins; there's not a ghost of a show for any more. You think it over. Day after to-morrow I'll send two or three men over to help you tear down your shanty if you've changed your mind. If you haven't, I expect they'll tear it down anyhow. You'd might as well go gracefully, and save your pride."

"I'll be here when they come, and the house is not going to be torn down."

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/197


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/198

 "A couple of days can make a big difference in a man's opinion, sometimes," Hewitt said, laughing a little in his sure and easy way. "I've known a man to change his politics in two minutes down in Texas. Would eight dollars a ton be about right for that hay? I guess we can figure it near enough in the stack. I'd just as well give you a check for it now—I don't know when I'll be over this way again."

"You don't seem to get me right," Rawlins found himself arguing with this persistent, suavely-inflexible man. He was annoyed because he had to argue it, when his purpose was so unalterable to himself. "The hay is not for sale at any price. And there are two sides to this advice about thinking it over. You've got a big think coming to you before you make a move to throw me out of here without process of law. If I'ma trespasser, prove it in court and I'll go without a word.

"These people all around here know Galloway grabbed this land out of the public domain and fenced it. He has no lease; he isn't paying the Government a cent for the use of it. And these poor rabbits are riding forty miles for their mail around Galloway's fence when they've got a legal right to tear it down anywhere. It's a principle of common law, established by centuries of practice, that anybody has a right to remove a common nuisance. There's not a bit of use to argue and bluff around, Mr. Hewitt. I'm here to stay."

Hewitt stiffened up at this, looking somewhat hurt by the first defiance he ever had taken from a man in the Dry Wood country. He looked at Rawlins with

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/198


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/199

 a wrinkling of concentration around his eyes, steadily, sharply, for a moment.

"You mean well, Rawlins, but you're a damn fool," he said dispassionately, entirely free of contempt. It was merely a mild statement of what he plainly believed a fact so apparent to everybody that no stress was required.

That said, Hewitt rode on, cantering easily, riding as lightly as the just and law-abiding man he would have the homesteader believe him to be.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/199


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/200

night Rawlins drove Mrs. Peck's team to the ranch, leading Graball to carry him back. He found the fence hooked up loosely at the township line where he had cut it to enter, as if they had deferred permanent repairs until he either had been expelled or eliminated from the contest in some other effective way.

Mrs. Peck was relieved to see the wagon and team again. Her satisfaction increased when she learned that Rawlins had returned them until he had made his homestead within the fence secure. There was no intimation in his act of a doubt on the outcome of the purely physical contest scheduled to start on the day after to-morrow. He said he didn't want anything to happen to the team.

Mrs. Peck said she wished him good luck, and that it was a darned good thing she hadn't let him take any sheep in there. Her interest in the impending clash was lively; the prospect of a fight in which neither she nor her property was involved appeared to cheer her up mightily. It would give them something to talk about in the sheep country.

Edith Stone had little to say in the matter, but there was an anxious strain in her face that betrayed a more

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/200


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/201

 sympathetic interest than her aunt's. Rawlins was grateful for her unspoken support.

Mrs. Peck's marital adventure had not changed her for better or worse in appearance, although the disappointment she felt in her husband might have been sufficient to make lines in a less hardy woman's face. On this phase of her domestic relations Mrs. Peck was outspoken, with a frankness embarrassing to Rawlins in Edith's presence.

"It would be a grand thing for us sheepmen up here in Dry Wood this summer if you was to throw that country open to our sheep," Mrs. Peck said. "I wish I had a husband that was man enough to help you, but no woman ever had a poorer excuse for a man than me."

"A poor excuse is better than none, they say," Rawlins reminded her, reserving the opinion that she ought to be thankful for what she had grabbed out of the bag, considering her years, her flesh and her red neck.

"It may be in some things but it ain't in a man," she insisted with the certainty of wide experience. "Duke would 'a' made forty of that gogglin' gander. He said you run acrost him as you was comin' up to your claim, but you never said nothing about it to us."

"Yes, I met him on the range that day. He was looking well, taking it kind of easy."

"I guess easy!" she said meaningly. "He thinks he's workin' in a bank, he lays asleep till the sun burns him out. I went over there at eight o'clock one morning and found him still sawin' gourds, his sheep bellerin' so you'd think a man couldn't sleep in a mile of

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/201


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/202

 'em, not if he had any heart in him, anyhow. He thinks I'll git disgusted with him and take them sheep away from him and kick him out, but I started to make a sheepman out of him and I'll either make him or break him. Did he tell you about tryin' to run off?"

"Yes, he said something about it. I met him, in fact, the night he was on his way."

"You did?"

"He stopped at Lineberger's, where I had taken shelter out of a storm. I felt kind of sorry for him to see him prisoner on the range again. Why don't you take the string off his leg, Mrs. Peck, and let him go?"

Edith had been making a pretense of looking at the pictures in a magazine. At Rawlins' suggestion in behalf of her one-time mail-order suitor the girl threw the magazine down with a slap, broke out in a sudden burst of laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair as if the net of merriment had made her as much a prisoner as Peck, and she was struggling to break through to liberty.

Mrs. Peck looked at her sourly.

"If you was married to him you'd laugh out of the other side of your mouth, young lady," she said.

"I'm not," said Edith, provokingly comfortable in her security.

"You're to blame for him, you brought him out here. By rights you ought to be the one to have the trouble with him."

"He cut me cold for you, auntie. He wouldn't have me. I lost out the night Elmer brought you the money to pay off the men."

"Yes, he tried to rob me," Mrs. Peck accused, turn-

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/202


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/203

 ing to Rawlins, nodding ponderously. "He turned the house upside-down that time he made his break to run off with one of my horses. It'll take a smarter man than him to git his paws on any of my money, I'm here to tell you!"

"Where's the change?" said Edith, repeating Peck's well-remembered demand on Tippie. She looked her question straight into Rawlins' eyes, holding out her hand, severe, mandatory, gruff—to go off into another rocking fit of laughter the next moment, the demanding hand pressed to her side, where her riotous mirth was struggling like a cat in a sack.

"Maybe I'll surprise you one of these days by makin' a man out of that feller yet," Mrs. Peck almost threatened, her disapprobation of this hilarity strong in her face.

"You would," said Edith soberly.

"I think if you'd give him a dime now and then he'd be more contented," Rawlins said, so seriously that Edith collapsed, flinging her arms on the table, smothering her face in them, sputtering and gasping in the very climax of mirth.

"When he earns it like any other hand, I'll give it to him," Mrs. Peck said, resenting the criticism of her methods of making a man. "When any skite-poke like him thinks he can marry me and honey around till he gits his paws on my money, he's got a whole lot to learn."

"Well, he's yours," said Rawlins, in a manner dumping Peck and the subject of his proper subjugation on her hands at the same time. "Go to it. I wish you luck. Is Elmer up in the mountains?"

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/203


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/204

 "No, he's out on the range somewhere. I look for him in to-night. He's been around payin' off the men—this is the first week in the month, you know."

"I'd kind of lost track of time," Rawlins laughed. "A man surrounded by a wire fence is like a castaway on an island. Nobody ever passes his way to remind him whether it's to-day or to-morrow."

"If Elmer was here he could tell you a lot about Hewitt. Elmer used to be over west of here runnin' sheep of his own five or six years ago. A couple of sheepmen cut Galloway's fence over there one time and tried to take their sheep in. Hewitt's fence-riders killed 'em both. Nothing ever was done to 'em, they never as much as arrested 'em for it, because them sheepmen had guns on'em. That'll be the end of it if they shoot and kill you in there. They'll say they was defending their lives."

"They would be," said Edith, with conclusive emphasis. "Do you think Ned's going to stand there hands down and let anybody shoot him off the face of the earth?"

"I'd like to have it said a man of mine was standin' by the side of you when you put up a fight for your rights in there," Mrs. Peck said wistfully. "But I might as well wish for self-shearin' sheep. Duke wouldn't 'a' done it, much less this stumble-over-nothin' I've got now. Duke was a good sheepman, but he was juberous about a fight. But I stick to what I said: if you make good holdin' your homestead in there till fall I'll let you take in a band of sheep. I guess if you can stand Galloway's men off you can stand off these little sheepmen around here that's

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/204


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/205

 watchin' and hopin' for a chance to go in there and hog the water."

"When it's open to one it's open to all," Rawlins said, putting a cold hand on her greedy plans.

"That'd be foolish," Mrs. Peck chided him severely. "What a man fights for and wins is hisn."

"According to Galloway's argument it is," Rawlins agreed, "If I take sheep limit off for myself, I take it off for everybody."

"Well, I wasn't figgerin' that way when I said you could have a band of mine to run on shares," Mrs. Peck said. "If we couldn't git the good out of it I might as well keep my sheep at home. I thought you was aimin' to go in there and have it all to yourself for a year or two, anyhow."

"You misunderstood me then," Rawlins corrected her, more disappointed than surprised to see this narrow greediness.

"If it's goin' to be throwed open to all corners I might as well put my herders in there as to put in a band on shares with you. I never did go shares with anybody, although Duke started up two or three of these sheepmen around here that way. I only made the offer to you, Ned, because I thought we'd have that land to ourselves. You can see how it'll be if it's open to everybody that comes along. Homesteadin' farmers'll grab the land, us sheepmen won't have any place to go inside of a year."

"I wouldn't think you'd go back on your word, Aunt Lila," Edith declared, flushing with shame for the family honor.

Rawlins had a sort of gone feeling as he listened to

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/205


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/206

 this repudiation of the bargain upon which his hopes were shaped. He saw himself a struggling homesteader in a land where he had almost everything to learn, surrounded by sheepmen who knew all there was to be acquired in their tricky trade. Unless he could compete with them on their own terms he'd just as well save his energies for a more promising field. There was about as much honesty on one side of Galloway's fence as the other.

"Business is business," Mrs. Peck said in reply to Edith's criticism of her ethics.

"You ought to feel like a horsethief even to think of such a backdown on your word, Aunt Lila."

"Well, I ain't goin' to lose no sheep next winter, no difference whether Galloway's fence comes down or not," Mrs. Peck said, defiant in her stand. "I can feed, I'm ready to feed, but I'm not sayin' it wouldn't be cheaper for me and better for my sheep to run 'em in there where the grass ain't been touched all summer. I ain't beholdin' to nobody for openin' up no land. I'm purty well fixed the way I am."

"You promised Ned you'd let him have a band on shares if he held down his homestead three months, and now when you see it's going to be a free-for-all you pull in your horns."

"It's all right," Rawlins hastened to interpose in the interest of family peace, "your decision one way or the other doesn't make any difference to me, Mrs. Peck."

"If I were you," Edith advised him, "I'd take a shot at the first sheepman to show his nose within five miles of my place."

Edith was hot about it; her cheeks were as red as if

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/206


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/207

 she had just turned from the kitchen stove. Rawlins grinned assuringly, grateful for her interest in his diminishing chance of a band of sheep to run on shares, although his spirits were as low as the water in the creek before the sheepwoman's door.

"I ain't said I'll not let him have a band," Mrs. Peck defended herself, calmly, with no resentment of her niece's hard handling of her business methods; "but I am sayin' I'd lose money by it if that's the way it's to be. I thought Ned was openin' that land for himself, not everybody that comes along; I thought he'd make Galloway build a lane up to his claim to let him out and in, and the rest of it would be shut up as tight as it is now."

"Mainly for the benefit of Mrs. Peck," said Edith. "If I were you, Ned, I'd throw over the whole business. These sheepmen around here are all standin' on one leg waitin' to jump the minute you show 'em it's safe inside of that fence."

"I suppose that's to be expected," said Rawlins.

"And they'd be about as grateful as the sheep."

"She always is hard on us sheepmen," Mrs. Peck laughed, "and she'll end up by marryin' one, I'll bet."

"I've had enough of sheep-wagons, thank you."

"They don't all live in wagons," Mrs. Peck giggled. "I know one that's begun by buildin' him a house—even before he's got any sheep. She can say what she pleases about sheepmen, Ned, but she's as good a sheepman as any of 'em, and she likes the business, too. I learnt her, and I learnt her good. There's Elmer. Yes, that's him. I'd know that man's step in a thousand. It's funny I didn't hear him ride up."

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/207


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/208

 "We heard him," Edith said, grinning knowingly at Ned. "You're gettin' deaf, Aunt Lila. And what would Mr. Peck say if he heard you talkin' that way about another man's step? I'll bet you wouldn't know his if he had mule shoes on his heels."

"Oh, you git out!" Mrs. Peck said, red as inflammation.

Tippie saved her from being drowned in confusion, the two young people laughing unfeelingly. The ranch foreman opened the door without ceremony, standing a moment with hand on the knob after closing it behind him, hat on his head, looking as glum and sour as if he might be the householder returning home unexpectedly and surprising a scene of unauthorized festivity.

"Hello, Elmer," Edith greeted him, jumping up nimbly to begin getting out his supper, kept in the warming oven in expectation of his coming.

"Um-m-m," said Elmer, in his usual close-mouthed form.

Rawlins shook hands with him, a ceremony which Tippie entered into with more spirit than his unsmiling face and severe eyes gave warrant for expecting, for he liked Rawlins and was glad to see him. He doubtless felt that his friendly handclasp was sufficient expression of his regard and interest, turning without a word to hang his leather coat and floppy hat on the accustomed hook behind the door.

"How's the range lookin' by now, Elmer?" Mrs. Peck inquired.

"Dried up and blowed away," said Elmer.

"How's the sheep lookin' on the south range?"

"Like skins hangin' on the fence," said Elmer.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/208


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/209

 He was ladling water from pail to washpan, solemn of face, fixed and attentive as if he must measure an exact quantity before putting a finger in it. A dipperful more or less might throw it off balance with shocking result. He washed with a dry, rasping sound, as if he had sandpaper on his hands. While he stood drying himself on the clean towel Edith handed him, Mrs. Peck gave him an edgeways look, as if sizing him up for some question she wanted to ask, but was not certain whether the time had arrived for its friendly reception. She chanced it, win or lose.

"Did you see that long-hungry, step-on-his-feet-and-fall-down man of mine over there around Lost Horse Canyon?"

"Um-m-m," said Elmer, giving the grunt an inflection of affirmation.

"You didn't give him any money, did you, Elmer?" Anxiously, wetting her dry lips with her tongue, which she lopped around with a little more effectiveness than elegance.

"Did he have any comin'?" Elmer inquired, pausing in his wiping to fix her with stern eyes.

"You know he never."

"He got all that was due him, then."

"What was he doin'?"

"Readin' a book Riley lent him."

"You don't tell me?" Hopefully, a little proudly. "It must 'a' been a law book, Riley don't read anything but law books. Did you see what it was about, Elmer?"

"Divorces," said Elmer shortly.

But that was plenty. Mrs. Peck rose slowly, as

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/209


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/210

 if about to start out on some duty, distasteful and long deferred. She had a grim, combative look on her shallow forehead, where her large eyebrows were bunched over her nose like a swarm of bees. Over at the stove Edith's unruly laughter jumped the fence again. She stood swaying back and forth in the gale of merriment, beating the pot, from which she had been dipping mutton stew, with the big iron spoon.

Even Tippie was robbed of a grin in the surprising assault against his short ribs. Rawlins turned to the window, pretending to look out, although it was so dark nothing but his own picture could be seen in the pane. Mrs. Peck glared around at them, as if she suspected everyone present of a hand in the conspiracy.

"I'll learn him about divorces!" she announced, so cold in her rage she almost shivered. "I'm goin' over there this very night and wear him out with a strap!"

"Go on," Elmer encouraged, getting a grim pleasure out of it. "That's what he's achin' for. The minute you lay a rough hand on him he's got you by the short hair."

"The man never lived that could git a divorce from me!" Mrs. Peck declared furiously. "I'll cut the livers out of him!"

"Damages is what he's achin' for," said Elmer, provokingly calm.

"I'll damage him! I'll give him all the damage he can pack—oh, shut up!"

This adjuration was fired at Edith with a passionate shriek that shivered and broke at the end, as if it had hit the wall. Edith wiped her eyes on her apron, neither sorry nor subdued.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/210


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/211

 "You poor old fat goose," she said, with a sort of gentle pity.

"I'm none so fat, I'll thank you!" Mrs. Peck shot back, her tenderest point touched, for the delusion of a fleshy lady is not confined to social circles and city squares.

Edith grinned, her corrective douche having shown the desired effect. Mrs. Peck's flurry of wrath began to subside. She sat down, panting as if she had been chasing a scattered band of sheep.

"I'll learn him!" she promised. "He'll stay there with them sheep till wool grows down to his eyes like a ram. I'll go over there in the morning, I'll law-book him! I'll wear it out on his head."

"You better take him a pie," Elmer suggested.

"And give him a dime for chewin' gum," Edith contributed to the domestic advice.

"I'll comb that long hair of his with a board full of tenpenny nails! I'll learn him that no man that ever marries me's goin' to hop up and quit because he can't squander my money on hair oil and fancy vests."

"He's learnin'," Elmer assured her from his place at the table. "I wouldn't be surprised if he rared up and bit a sheep one of these days. He knows all about divorces and property."

"He can't touch a cent of my money, divorce or no divorce."

"Alimony," said Elmer, with glum finality. "If you marry a cripple you've got to support him."

"He'll be a cripple when IJ git through with him! I'm goin' over there early in the morning, and if that excuse opens his head to me about a divorce I'll lay him

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/211


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/212

 out. I'm not goin' to be disgraced by no divorce. I'd sooner have it said I was married to three livin' men at one time than divorced from half a one."

Mrs. Peck left the kitchen, and the three unsympathetic ones who were passing grins between themselves at her expense, probably to prepare for her visit to the range next morning, or perhaps to relieve her anger and dread of disgrace in unsheepwomanly tears. That seemed the more likely, indeed, as her voice had quivered even in the most dreadful and threatening passages against the security and beauty of her spouse.

Edith at once swung the talk to Rawlins' situation and the notice he had received from Hewitt to tear down his house and be gone. Elmer heard this with a deeper seriousness clouding his face. He advised Rawlins to quit the venture. He knew Hewitt of old. He was a soft man with his words, but a hard one in his deeds. They would come against him in such force he'd have no show to hold his own.

Taking off sheep limit was not a job for one man, Elmer said. It was a task for a hundred, organized and armed and ready to lay down their lives. Even then Galloway would beat them. Come along out of there, Elmer advised, while the coming was good.

Rawlins heard the advice in good spirit, non-committal on whether he would act upon it or allow it to float away on the wind. Edith went with him when he left to mount Graball and return to his perilous homestead beyond sheep limit.

"You didn't tell Elmer whether you're going to come

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/212


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/213

 out or stay," she said, a strange, strained anxiety in her face, an unwonted timidity in her manner.

"No, I didn't tell Elmer," he replied.

Rawlins was standing at the open gate ready to mount, hand on the saddle-horn. It was a clear, placid night, the wind coming from the mountains refreshed and scented with the spicy dryness of sage and drought-withered herbs. There did not seem to be a mote in the age-old path of the starbeams, spearing through cold space to find their journey's end in the transitory reflection of a human eye.

"Are you going to give it up?"

"What do you say about it, Edith?"

"I haven't got anything to say. I was just wondering, after Elmer's talk."

"Elmer's talk was well-meant, and maybe I'd be wise to follow his advice. But I'm not going to do it."

"I'd have been disappointed in you if you had," she said, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. "Hewitt expects you to leave, he thinks you'll act like a sheepman. I don't."

"You're not very strong for sheepmen. Aren't you a little disloyal to your craft?"

"I may be a little rough in my judgment of them," she admitted, "but they don't inspire much admiration when they'll ride forty miles around a fence to get their mail. I've hoped for years," she confessed wistfully, "that some man would come along here big enough to make them take down that fence. I've been betting on you, Ned. It would have given me an awful jolt if you'd let Elmer's talk scare you out."

"Now, I've got to make good!" he laughed.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/213


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/214

 "I can see your house from the top of that hill where I cut the wire that time," she said.

"You can?" He was more pleased that she had taken the interest to look for it than to know it was so conspicuous from afar.

"Yes," she sighed, "but it's out of range. I couldn't help you any from there."

"You can help me a whole lot anywhere, Edith. Just wish me good luck from the top of the hill—or anywhere you happen to be."

"Always," she said, with simple sincerity.

She gave him her hand with the word, for one quick, warm, assuring little clasp, and turned and ran to the house in a queer break of shyness not at all in keeping with her boisterous hilarity and unreserved fellowship of a little while before.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/214


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/215

was not much in the immediate outlook conducive to a calm spirit and peaceful repose. Such sleep as Rawlins had that night was crowded with strife and battle. The subconscious man inside him seemed allied with the enemy, for his sleepless imagination contrived dreams which harassed him by scenes of perils having neither beginning nor end, leaping from one to another like broken fragments of flame.

In all of them he was trammeled by some unseen force that made him impotent against his tormentors. When he shot in desperate defense of his threatened life, it was only a weak fizzle, the smoke dribbling from the muzzle of his gun as from a cigarette; when he battled bare-handed, punching for all that was in him, Hewitt, or the variations of Hewitt which all his enemies assumed, stood unmoved. No matter how much steam he put into his punches, his fists seemed to float gently against jaws and ribs of leering Hewitts as if he moved in a vacuum which affected nobody else.

If he had been a man who put any stock in visions, Rawlins would have packed up a day ahead of the date set for him to go. He was up at dawn, heavy, unrefreshed, feeling as if sand had blown into his eyes, distrustful of the truce Hewitt had set. He expected them to appear any moment, with destructive designs

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/215


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/216

 against his house, and his life if he should interpose to protect it.

He had not slept in the house that night, Tippie's counsel in that particular being heeded. Galloway's men might come in the night, drench his little house with kerosene, and roast him in it. Many a sheepman and herder had gone that fiery way in the contests of the northwestern range. Rawlins was no stranger to the hideous practice.

Rawlins' faith in his venture was shaken. Of course a man had to start somewhere, but, as Clemmons had said, there were safer places and more comfortable. Mrs. Peck had found a convenient excuse for repudiating her agreement; the sheepmen around would be quick to hop in and profit by his victory, chance it that he should win, and he would be left holding the sack.

But he could not abandon the venture now. His honor was involved, his courage had been challenged. More than that, the old feeling of resentment against Galloway for building that barrier, fencing him off from his destiny, as he regarded it, rose up renewed. Sheep or no sheep, he would hold that homestead, if for no other purpose or reward than the vindication of an American citizen's rights.

It was an aim entirely altruistic, somewhat uselessly heroic. Galloway would close the gap in the fence at the township line after Rawlins had been forced, by lack of funds to carry out his enterprise, to pursue his fortunes in some more congenial atmosphere. Or perhaps the sheepmen would be strong enough to hold it by that time, and one of them would jump his claim the hour his back was turned.

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/216


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/217

 For all Rawlins' qualms, that day passed uneventfully. Hewitt evidently was a man who respected his word. Rawlins felt that he would be as inexorable in the other extreme as he was faithful in the observance of his truce.

Rawlins spent the day in vigilance, planning what his action should be if they appeared on this side; how he would move to defend his little house if they came up on that. His situation was in a valley about two miles wide, the hills on its borders dwindling down to blend with it out of their rough cast and sullen aspect, their slopes refreshed with abundant grass and green shrubs. By day, a surprise was impossible; even at night a watchful man would have warning of an approach, unless made stealthily on foot, an unlikely way for Hewitt's men to come on that business against a man whose puny defiance they would despise.

They would come in determination to wipe him out so effectually, and humiliate him so thoroughly, as to discourage others. The success of this bold homesteader would mean the loss of their idle jobs of fence-riding, for others would pour in if he could make that piece of paper from a misguided land agent hold. Rawlins realized that he faced the anomaly of being in greater danger on account of his unquestionable tenure, a situation not uncommon in the relations of might and right.

There would be no sleep for him this night, the last before the great issue between him and Galloway's men.

The strategy of the savage man, instead of the careful planning of the trained mind, is the resort of one

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/217


text:
Page:Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (UKPGA Geo6-10-11-44 qp).pdf/7

 10 & 11

thereof; or
 * (b) where it is impossible to ascertain her tonnage as provided by paragraph (a) of this subsection, taking her estimated tonnage as certified for the purposes of this paragraph, and deducting from her estimated tonnage as so certified ten per cent. thereof.

Where it is necessary to ascertain the tonnage of a ship in the manner provided by paragraph (b) of this subsection, the Chief Ships Surveyor of the Ministry of Transport, or the officer for the time being discharging the functions of the said Surveyor, shall, upon the direction of the court concerned, and after considering such evidence of the dimensions of the ship as it may be practicable to obtain, estimate what her tonnage would have been found to be if she could have been duly measured for the purpose, and issue a certificate stating her tonnage as so estimated by him.

(6) For the purposes of this section the expression “ship” has the meaning assigned to it by section seven hundred and forty-two of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, but includes also:—
 * (a) any vessel which is a ship as defined by section four of the Merchant Shipping (Liability of Shipowners) Act, 1898; and
 * (b) every description of lighter, barge or like vessel used in navigation in Great Britain, however propelled, so, however, that a vessel used exclusively in non-tidal waters, other than harbours, shall not for the purposes of this paragraph be deemed to be used in navigation.

(7) Any reference in this section to the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1940, which limit the amount of the liability of the owners of ships shall be construed as including a reference to any provision of those Acts which negatives the liability of the owner of a ship, and accordingly any reference in this section to limiting the liability of any person shall be construed as including a reference to negativing his liability.

(8) Relief shall not be available by virtue of the Merchant Shipping (Liability of Shipowners) Act, 1898, in any case in which it is available by virtue of this section.

6. The provisions of sections one, two and three of the Maritime Conventions Act, 1911 (which relate to the apportionment of damage or loss caused by vessels) shall apply in the case of vessels belonging to His Majesty as they apply in the case of other vessels. Rh


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/218

 matched against many, almost invariably. Instead of plotting some cunning method of defense in which one man might equal several, Rawlins withdrew a discreet distance from his haystacks and house, posting himself in a little depressed circle which he recognized, from old association on the Kansas prairies, as a buffalo wallow.

Greasewood and small bushes had grown thick around the edges of this embankment, which was about fifty yards from his house. It made a screen and shelter behind which a man might lie and do considerable damage with a rifle before even ten men could drive him into the open. At night it would be almost unassailable from any direction except the front, screened in the rear and flanked on either hand by a thick growth of sage and taller greasewood.

It must have been thirty years since a buffalo bull rolled and wallowed in that pit, rubbing off his shaggy winter coat, but it had been worn so deep, and trampled so hard, that no seed or shoot of shrub had sprung there in all the intervening leap of time. Grass had crept in and woven its tenacious sod, as some faithful custodian keeping the castle of an absent baron ready to his repose against his long-deferred return.

A man could watch there in comfortable security, Rawlins believed. He could creep out, dodging in the skirting bushes, and approach within twenty yards of the house, even in daylight, without being seen. He was grateful to the old buffalo that had planned so well to meet his needs these long years after its bones had whitened in the sun and gone back to dust in the pasture of the plains. In the security of this place he sat

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/218


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/219

 down, canteen at hand, to wait the turn of the card that was to decide his destiny in the Dry Wood country.

There was a little lemon-rind of new moon in the south-west, which was down before ten o'clock, leaving the earth starlit, and full of baffling shadows. It was as if the dregs of night had settled to the ground, like the precipitate of clarifying water, in a shallow stratum of obscuration. The tops of trees along Rawlins' stream, the roof of his house, the peaks of his haystacks, reached above this low-lying darkness. Below that height things were indefinite, merged in the low-pressing shades. The ear, not the eye, must be a man's sentinel a night like that.

It was well enough, Rawlins thought, accustomed as he was to night-watches over herds. A man could not strike a match behind house or haystack without betraying his presence; in the quiet of the valley, no live stock except Graball to stamp and make a noise, Hewitt's men would have to ride on air to surprise him. Graball was picketed well out of the way of wild bullets under the bank of the creek, yet near enough to reach him if the desperate necessity of getting away in a hurry should come.

A surprise was out of the question, Rawlins assured himself. What he should do when they came must be resolved by the event. Planning and imagining ahead was only a waste and strain. He hoped it would not be necessary even to wound anybody, although he knew they would not come with any such charitable reservations toward him. Justice and the law were on his side, which was a comfortable assurance, although he

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/219


text:
Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/220

 had been told that Galloway was bigger than either in that part of the State.

Rawlins got out his pipe after the moon had been gone two hours or more, to ease the tension of his silent waiting. There was no honesty in secrecy, let the smoke betray his presence as it might. He was not hiding out from anybody, only availing himself of the advantage that caution might give him. He did not want them to believe him absent, but to take it that he was standing off just that way, watching and ready, with his gun at his hand, determined to fight for that little chunk of earth that was his birthright as a citizen of the United States.

So he reasoned, back against the bowl of the old buffalo wallow, hands clasped behind his head, looking up at the cold blue points of the stars.

Rawlins sprang out of what he thought a momentary doze, alarmed by the creak of riving planks, the splintering crash of breaking glass. He cursed his treasonable lapse when he saw that it was daylight, and that four men on horseback were trying to drag his house down with ropes tied to their saddle-horns.

Another mounted man, who was supervising the job, was posted before the door, as if watching for the inhabitant of the little plank box to appear. This man was holding his gun poised ready to throw it down in a quick shot, just as if he waited for a rabbit at a hole in a hedge.

Rawlins was not concerned about the house coming down, for he had anchored it well at the corners to posts set deep in the ground, as he had seen such houses on the Kansas prairies tied down against the wind. It

title: Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/220