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 town and take a little toot for a week or two once in a while, but a sheepman can't. He's a slave to them nigger-headed beasts."

Rawlins enlarged on his designs of becoming a sheepman in the country he was about to open, but without moving the old man from his avowed intention of keeping his feet clear of Galloway's domain. In the end Rawlins was forced to the conclusion that all the talk Clemmons had made on a previous occasion about becoming a big sheepman if he had room to expand was nothing but gab. He had weathered it there in his small way all those years, and there he would stick, no matter if the earth were spread before him and the best of it offered for his taking.

There was no better place for sheep than the well-watered homestead he had chosen; Rawlins believed. It lay in a little valley where the offrun of rain from the hills soaked deep into the earth, storing moisture against drought such as the range was suffering at that time. The grass would be ready to mow now. He considered the feasibility of harvesting the crop and selling it to the hard-pressed sheepmen the coming winter.

That would call for an outlay of more money for machinery and help than he could command, after making such improvements as the law required on his claim. His haymaking would have to be confined to scythe and rake that summer, in which primitive fashion he could put up enough to make Graball comfortable. He'd have to run a double wire around that hayland of his to keep Galloway's stock out of it. There must be close to a hundred acres fit for mowing,