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 some member that he had removed with startling effect upon the beholder, and assumed his proper and familiar shape again.

"No, you ain't strayed off a mile. This is the Dry Wood country. You're at sheep limit right now."

"Sheep limit, did you say?"

"Them's the words I used," said Clemmons, as testily resentful, it seemed, as if his veracity had been challenged.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Clemmons. I couldn't understand what a sheep limit might be, or why there should be a sheep limit."

"Nobody else can, but in the morning I'll show you the deadline. If you want to satisfy yourself it is the deadline, all you've got to do is cut them wires and run a band of sheep over it."

Rawlins avowed he did not question Clemmons' exposition of the case at all, but that he was curious to know more about it: who had set the deadline, what force there was behind it, and what right.

"No more right than there's right to stop me breathin' air," Clemons declared. "But there's force enough, I guess, to satisfy most people. You know, if you're a United States senator, son, you can do a whole lot of things other folks can't."

"Yes, that's so; I've seen them do it."

"Well, if you've had experience with 'em you know the breed. If you're one of them senators you can turn many a trick that'd send men like me and you huntin' our holes, includin' fencin' in public land without no more lease on it than a rabbit, and hirin' a lot of horse