Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/44

 One thing about it was certain: the pressure of haste was gone out of the adventure. The fence across the frontier of his great white spot had put a new aspect on the entire proceeding for Rawlins. Time was no longer the essence of that business.

He proceeded on his way leisurely, his intention of becoming a flockmaster in no way altered, although the means to that end had undergone a sharp revision overnight. His dollar watch told him it was eight o'clock, near enough to the correct time for all pur-: poses in a country where hours and miles were alike insignificant in the broad pattern of men's lives, when he brought up on a hilltop to project his inquiring gaze over grey slope and green vale for the ranches the sheepman had told him would be found in that direction.

Nothing in the shape of man's habitation was in sight. Except for the fence, the country appeared as empty as on the day it was finished and left there for the solemn sage to cover with its charity, the spiked soapweed to rear its forbidding spears among. Rawlins wondered if the fence-riders would object if he cut across the senator's ranch to strike Lost Cabin, which place Clemmons had told him could be seen from a high hill a little way north of his range.

Concluding that no grounds for opposing a peaceful trespass could be advanced by the guards, chancing that he might run across any of them, Rawlins decided to risk the encounter when he came to the hill from which he could lay his course.

Rawlins got his first understanding of what a sheepman meant by a "little ways" that morning. Clem-