“This here, Hash-Knife explained to me, was the way things stood: Hartley was located on the Crossin’ with a bunch of sheep--about twenty-five hundred head. He’d built him a cabin, and had likewise strung a four-strand barb-wire fence across the coulée that led down to the flat. And he was goin’ to stay there, he said. He had a squatter’s right, and if he wanted to live there and fence his place he’d do it. It was government land, and to hell with the cow outfits! He was from Missouri, he was! And up on the bench, about six or seven miles back, the Big Four and the Ragged H was swingin’ up to the Crossin’ with a beef herd apiece, and the wagon-bosses was mad, for they’d heard of old man Hartley. “‘Old “Peek-a-Boo” Johnson’s runnin’ the Big Four,’ Hash-Knife told me. ‘I got him to let me ride ahead and see if I couldn’t talk some sense into the old man. But it’s no go. He’s got his neck bowed, and he’s fool ’nough to try and run a whizzer on Peek-a-Boo’s riders; they’ll clean him out if he does. I saw Stella ride off as I was comin’ down to the ranch, and when I got through with him I rambled down this way and found her. I want her to stay away from the flat for two or three hours, till the thing is settled one way or the other, but she’s bound to go home. So I guess we’d better be goin’. The wagons ought to hit the Crossin’ pretty soon.’ “We went up on the bench. Stella and Hash-Knife and me, and loped along toward the Crossin’. Pretty soon we could see the two sets of wagons and a bunch of riders headin’ for the creek, the two herds--big ones--trailin’ along behind, about a mile apart. At the head of the coulée I turned my string loose for the horse-wrangler to pick up. With Stella cryin’ and Hash-Knife tryin’ to comfort her, we swung down the coulée to the shack. “When we got there we found the herder had brought the sheep in to water. They’d moved back off water and was bedded down, bunched close, about half-way between the cabin and the creek. There was three of ’em at the cabin; old Hartley, the herder, and a pilgrim that’d come out to work on the ranch. “Old Hartley looked pretty black at us as we rode up, but he didn’t have time to say much before the wagons come rollin’ out the mouth of the coulée. They was almost at the house before he knowed it. Then he ducked into the cabin and come out with a Winchester across his arm. The outfit went past without battin’ an eye at him. They went round the sheep and started to pitch camp on the creek-bank. Then Peek-a-Boo and Tom Jordan, the Ragged H boss, come a-ridin’ up to the cabin. “They was nice and polite about it. They told old Hartley that seein’ he was a stranger they thought he’d probably made a mistake and got over on the wrong side of the ridge. They didn’t want to make any trouble for him, but he’d have to take his sheep off the creek. Sorry to bother him, but it was range law.