Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/71

 time animation fired the girl's features and a light kindled in her eyes.

"I did n't say we 'd back all the sheep people," Zang corrected. "I said you could count on us in case the cattle outfits start to move your sheep off the range. An' listen, girl, that time isn't far off as I reckon it. Here 's the layout. Five years ago, when ole Woolly Annie was the first to bring sheep into this country, the Hashknife an' the Flying O an' the Circle Y outfits drawed a line down along the spurs of the Broken Horns an' says, 'Everything east of this line 's cattle range; keep your woollies back in the high ground.'

"But 'long comes old Hard Winter Peters up on Beaver, an' he runs his sheep across the dead line. Then your pappy breezes in with his band on Crazy Squaw, inside the cowmen's boundary, an' th'ows in with Woolly Annie. Not to mention Zang Whistler, who has ways of his own for invadin' the cow outfits' rights. Which it 's all made the big cow owners to Cheyenne and back in England plumb restless an' rollicky as a new-broke bronc. So they sets this shorthorn, Original Bill—which he an' me used to ride night herd together on many a drive up the ole Plummer Trail—they sets