Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/267

 after Peck the homesteader charged, heavy with the water that filled his boots, sagged down by the ammunition he had loaded every available pocket with, yelling to Peck to lie down and wait. If Peck heard, he didn't even look back. Straight toward his abused flock he went charging, his long legs straddling sageclumps or taking them in clean leaps, at least sense enough in control above his roused and boiling anger to know he couldn't do any damage with his gun that far away.

When Peck came within what he calculated as shooting range, he stopped, braced himself with legs straddled wide, lifted his gun, gripping it in both hands, and cut loose. The roar of that ancient rim-fire forty-five drew the first notice of the fence-riders to the defenders of the flock. If they had seen Peck and Rawlins before that moment they evidently had thought them still too far away to be taken into account. They had been clubbing and shooting, and riding into the huddling little bunches of sheep as if bound to do as much destruction in the flock as possible before turning their attention to whoever was responsible for this insolent invasion.

They probably had concluded that Rawlins, or whoever was herding the sheep, had cut for safety at their approach. It was likely they had not counted on anybody but Rawlins having the effrontery to bring sheep inside the fence. A homesteader who would shoot a man exercising the feudal prerogative of burning his shanty might do something else equally dishonorable, even to driving a band of sheep inside the long-respected limit.