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 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