Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/38

 Gover'ment settin' aside them mountains for forest reserves, some of 'em without a tree on 'em as high as your head for twenty miles. Second place, nobody's got pull enough to lease a single foot of that land Jim Galloway's got his fence around. It couldn't be done."

"It looks raw; it looks scandalously raw."

"You're right; it is. I'm just about edged off of the map, I tell you, mister. If some feller comes along here one of these days purty soon when the weather begins to dry up and wants a cheap job-lot of sheep, I'll be standin' on the top of the hill waitin' to grab his money."

"Maybe I'll take you up on that one of these days," Rawlins said, laughing a little, not to make it look too serious, or himself too foolish, in the dusty old flockmaster's eyes.

"Whenever you're in the notion," Clemmons replied.

It didn't seem so unreasonable, or such a remote possibility, to Rawlins as he sat with his back against the wagon wheel, looking out over the mysterious duskiness of the sheeplands, at peace under the near, bright stars. Somebody would break through that baronial fence one of these days. Perhaps fate, or fortune, or circumstance had plotted with him in all his building upon that mysterious white spot on the map, shaping and guiding his own hand to the task.