Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/146

 of sheep were to be permitted in the forest reserves that summer. The reserves had been overgrazed, the rangers claimed, although the ancient flockmaster believed it was all part of a conspiracy to kill the sheepmen. True or false, the sheepmen would have to leave half their flocks on the plains that summer, where they would eat the range bare, leaving no provision for winter. It was a woeful outlook. It took the heart out of a man.

All this Clemmons poured into his visitor's ear as they sat on the sunny hillside above the grazing sheep, which were foraging industriously among the sage, the trembling complaint of the lambs rising in almost human appeal from hollows and braes.

"Well, where have you been since you got fired by that long-hungry speciment the Widder Duke's took in to raise?" Clemmons asked, after he had emptied himself of his own news and grievances, which every man considers of first importance, everywhere.

"So you've heard about that?" said Rawlins, surprised that news should travel in that thinly peopled country about the same as anywhere else.

"Elmer Tippie come by the other day. He was tellin' me."

"Oh, I see. I've been looking around a little on my own hook since Peck fired me."

"I thought maybe you'd left the country, or got a job with one of the big fellers further north."

"No, I didn't strike any of them. I've been back of sheep limit, spying out the country."

"Oh, you've been inside of Galloway's fence, heh?"

"Yes, I knocked around in there several days."