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 thieves to ride around it with guns on 'em to keep honest people out of their rights."

"So, that's what you mean by a sheep limit?"

"Right ahead of us," the old man nodded. "I'm plumb up agin it."

"He's a United States senator, is he?"

"Senator Jim Galloway. He's held the job so long he owns the steps leadin' up to the Capitol in Washington. Rough estimatin', he's got fifty miles square of. Gover'ment land fenced under four wires. That fence cost sixty thousand dollars, they say, but that's cheaper than buyin' land, or even leasin' it from the Gover'ment, not to say nothing of the hired hands it saves runnin' them cattle. Yes, if I had a map I could show you where that chunk of gobbled-up land lays."

Rawlins produced a map without a word, a feeling as of some cold, disintegrated heavy thing in his vitals. It was as if he had rolled up and swallowed a section of the senator's barbed-wire fence.

They spread the map out between them, the lantern on a corner of it. Clemmons ran his bent finger over it in a seeking line, as a hound runs here and there picking up a scent, coming in his own way to the checked and charted place that Rawlins had fixed upon for exploitation. It was the map Rawlins had got from the land office at Jasper; what had been the white and sterile place on his own little map was shown here plotted in township and section lines, with creeks and timber indicated, localities designated, all as plain to Clemmons as the first lesson in a primer.

"That's a good map," he said; "them Gover'ment boys sure know how to git up their maps. Right here's