Zeb watched him in silence until the smoke was made and then an idea seemed to strike him: “How much smokin’ yuh got on yore person, Ricky?” Ricky held up a limp sack containing about two more cigarets. “And I ain’t got uh bit,” stated Zeb. “She was all in that de-funct grub-box.” “Well,” remarked the philosophical Ricky, “they can’t blow our camp up no more. It ain’t as though they had only blew up part of it. Golly, Zeb, I’m shore hungry! What about uh little supper, eh? Give me yore gun and I’ll see if I can pick uh fat blatter in th’ dark while you builds uh little fire, eh?” “She tastes to me like it was uh sinful waste uh lead,” stated Ricky about an hour later, as he raked a piece of half-cooked meat out of the coals. “Doggone it, Zeb, uh sheep ought to be raised fer wool exclusive. As uh tender morsel I opines that she runs uh dead heat with owls and rawhide. Pass th’ salt please.” Zeb threw a piece of smoking meat at Ricky’s head and rolled over on the ground. “Ricky, what are we goin’ to do? Will we roll out of here and let th’ sheep nurse themselves or will we stay here until Watts comes or until we starve to death? Golly, he can’t blame us if we do leave. What yuh say?” “Leavin’ all jokin’ aside, Zeb, jist what does this all mean?” asked Ricky. “Got any real idea, Zeb?” “Sheep war,” stated Zeb. “Or at any rate I believes she is. I takes it that th’ cattlemen here are uh heap sore at th’ sheep and wants to drive ’em all off th’ range. I reads it all in that article back in Blue Joint. I reckon that is why we gits this job so easy. Watts ain’t got no other place to range his woolies and he’s plumb got to have herders. Greasers won’t put up no fight a-tall, and so he pays uh big salary to white men to guard his property, _sabe_? I figgers it that some of th’ hangers-on of th’ cattlemen done went and loaded our stove with giant powder and takes uh chance that we’ll git elevated so much that we won’t look at no sheep-herdin’ job no more, Ricky. That’s uh dirty mucker trick I takes it.” “Unha,” agreed Ricky. “I shore hates to quit in uh case like that. Mebby we’ll starve or go crazy and start blattin’ like uh pair uh two-legged woolies, Zebbie, old top but I’m game to sit in th’ game for uh few days yet. What say?” They solemnly shook hands across their little fire and then Ricky produced that greasy deck of cards again. “Doggone yo’re hide,” he drawled, “I’ll play yuh to see if she’s uh hundred thousand or quits. That last jack wasn’t le-gitimate, Zeb. It’s got uh corner torn and yuh knowed it.” The next three days were a nightmare of chasing sheep through the dust and heat and then eating half-cooked mutton for breakfast, dinner and supper, and of sleeping on the bare ground with nothing but the sky for a blanket. It gets cool in the small hours of the morning in the range country, albeit the thermometer rises to the century mark in the shade at midday.