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134 Metzal; wire and staples were on hand; as fast as the holes were dug the barrier could go up and, the sooner it was completed, the sooner an uncongenial task was finished.

Its purpose was to provide a special pasture for certain of Sheridan's best cows, picked fOr their reproducing qualities of certain good points already established in themselves, to be bred to his latest purchase, a thoroughbred Hereford into whose price had gone most of Sheridan's reserve. It was to be the beginning of his upgrading that eventually would lead to all-thoroughbred stock. No such animal had been seen on Chico Mesa. It was a magnificent creature heavy of bone and brawn and beef, shaggy of forefront, its hide, burnished like copper, so tightly waved as to suggest Sheridan's calling him Sir Marcelle Pompadour, instead of his much more dignified and illustrious pedigreed title.

With Stoney to boss the job of postholing and fencing, Sheridan and Jackson proposed to ride to the south holding and cut out certain of the selected cows tar an initial segregation. To them was to go the alfalfa as a pre-breeding stimulant and upbuilder.

As Sheridan stood outside the ranch-house, smoking the one pipe he craved after breakfast, Jim Lund, the cowboy who bad been beaten over the head the night of Quong's adventure, came round the house to draw a supply of tobacco against his wages. Sheridan gave him the key to the store cupboard and told him to help himself and charge it down on the slate. He had found all his men