"I'm sore on myself," he said. "But that's the way it is! If I'd had the brains of a rabbit I'd've stopped Jasp Swope last Spring--then I wouldn't need to be cuttin' brush here all Summer like a Mexican wood-chopper. That's where we fell down--lettin' them sheep in--and now we've got to sweat for it. But lemme tell you, boy," he cried, raising a mighty fist, "if I can keep jest one cow alive until Fall I'm goin' to meet Mr. Swope on the edge of my range and shoot 'im full of holes! Nothin' else will do, somebody has got to be _killed_ before this monkey business will stop! I've been makin' faces and skinnin' my teeth at that dastard long enough now, and I'm goin' to make him fight if I have to put high-life on 'im!" He stopped and looked out over the hillside where the heat quivered in rainbows from the rocks, and the naked _palo verdes_, stripped of their bark, bleached like skeletons beside their jagged stumps. "Say, Rufe," he began, abruptly, "I'm goin' crazy." He shook his head slowly and sighed. "I always thought I was," he continued, "but old Bill Johnson blew in on me the other day--he's crazy, you know--and when I see him I knowed it! W'y, pardner, Bill is the most _reas-on-able_ son-of-a-gun you can imagine. You can talk to him by the hour, and outside of bein' a little techy he's all right; but the minute you mention _sheep_ to him his eye turns glassy and he's off. Well, that's me, too, and has been for years, only not quite so bad; but then, Bill is plumb sheeped out and I ain't--quite!" He laughed mirthlessly and filled a cigarette. "You know," he said, squinting his eyes down shrewdly, "that old feller ain't so durned crazy yet. He wanted some ammunition to shoot up sheep-camps with, but bein' a little touched, as you might say, he thought I might hold out on 'im, so he goes at me like this: 'Jeff,' he says, 'I've took to huntin' lions for the bounty now--me and the hounds--and I want to git some thirty-thirtys.' But after I'd give him all I could spare he goes on to explain how the sheep, not satisfied with eatin' 'im out of house and home, had gone and tolled all the lions away after 'em--so, of course, he'll have to foller along, too. You catch that, I reckon." Creede drooped his eyes significantly and smoked.