Page:Patches (1928).pdf/193

 But no matter what the cow-punchers of the Crooked Creek ranch did to the family of the little German they still stayed by their guns and went on with their preparations for homesteading.

Just what form his revenge upon the Crooked Creek ranch would have taken is problematical had not nature played into his hands. The summer was a very dry one. There had been no rain for weeks. The feed upon the ranch which was usually of the best became brown and crisp. Leaves upon some of the trees even curled up. The land which was usually well watered became thirsty as a dry sponge and all the ranch especially the lower plateau was like a tinder box.

Under such conditions as these one can well imagine the consternation into which the cow-punchers were thrown one morning about the middle of July when one of their number came galloping in from the lower plateau shouting that the mesa was on fire in half a dozen places.

The lower plateau was perhaps four miles long and two miles wide. Crooked Creek which came down through Piñon Valley from the mountains above, skirted it on two sides and then continued on its way into the lowlands. Hank Brodie at once marshalled his little army to fight the fire and to extricate the six thousand head of badly frightened cattle from the dilemma in which they had been placed. The fire had