The morning turned black, and flushed rosy, and fell black again, but for once the merciless driver of men slept on, for he was over-weary. It was a noise, far away, plaintive, insistent, which finally brought him to his feet--the bleating of ewes to lambs, of lambs to mothers, of wethers to their fellows, beautiful in itself as the great elemental sounds of the earth, the abysmal roarings of winds and waves and waterfalls, but to the cowman hateful as the clamors of hell. As Creede stood in his blankets, the salt sweat of yesterday still in his eyes, and that accursed blat in his ears, his nerves gave way suddenly, and he began to rave. As the discordant babel drew nearer and nearer his passion rose up like a storm that has been long brewing, his eyes burned, his dirty face turned ghastly. Grabbing up his six-shooter he stood like a prophet of destruction calling down the wrath of God Himself, if there was a God, upon the head of every sheepman. But even as he cursed the first dirty brown wave spewed in over the ridge and swept down upon their valley. Then in a moment his madness overcame him and, raising his heavy pistol, he emptied it against them defiantly, while the resounding cliffs took up his wrath and hurled it back. A herder with his rifle leapt up on a distant rock and looked toward their camp, and at the sight the black anger of Jeff's father came upon him, filling him with the lust to kill. He rushed into the house and came out with a high-power rifle. "You _will_ stand up there and laugh at me, will you?" he said, deliberately raising the sights. "You--" He rested the rifle against one of the _ramada_ posts, and caught his breath to aim, while the cowmen regarded him cynically, yet with a cold speculation in their eyes. Hardy alone sprang forward to spoil his aim, and for a minute they bandied words like pistol shots as they struggled for the gun. Then with a last wailing curse, the big cowboy snapped the cartridge out of his rifle and handed it over to his partner. "You're right," he said, "let the dastard live. But if I ever git another chanst at Jasp Swope I'll kill him, if I swing for it! He's the boy I'm lookin' for, but you see how he dodges me? I've been movin' his sheep for two days! He's afraid of me--he's afraid to come out and fight me like a man! But I'll git 'im--I'll git 'im yet!" "All right," said Hardy soothingly, "you can do it, for all of me. But don't go to shooting Mexicans off of rocks as if they were turkey buzzards--that's what gets people into the pen. Now, you just take my advice for once and wash some of that dirt off your face. You're locoed, man--you're not a human being--and you won't be until you wash up and get your belly full."