"If it hadn't been for old Bill Johnson," he said, "we wouldn't have a live cow on our range to-day, we'd've been sheeped down that close. When he'd got his ammunition and all the bacon and coffee I could spare he sat down and told me how he worked it to move all them sheep last Spring. After he'd made his first big play and see he couldn't save the Pocket he went after them sheepmen systematically for his revenge. That thirty-thirty of his will shoot nigh onto two miles if you hold it right, and every time he sees a sheep-camp smoke he Injuned up onto some high peak and took pot-shots at it. At the distance he was you couldn't hear the report--and, of course, you couldn't _see_ smokeless powder. He says the way them Mexican herders took to the rocks was a caution; and when the fireworks was over they didn't wait for orders, jest rounded up their sheep and hiked! "And I tell you, pardner," said the big cowman impressively, "after thinkin' this matter over in the hot sun I've jest about decided to go crazy myself. Yes, sir, the next time I hear a sheep-blat on Bronco Mesa I'm goin' to tear my shirt gittin' to the high ground with a thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell 'em that your pore friend's mind was deranged by cuttin' too many _palo verdes_." He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ever sent the rain. On the day after the visit to Carrizo a change came over the sky; a haze that softened the edges of the hills rose up along the horizon, and the dry wind died away. As Hardy climbed along the rocky bluffs felling the giant _sahuaros_ down into the ravines for his cattle, the sweat poured from his face in a stream. A sultry heaviness hung over the land, and at night as he lay beneath the _ramada_ he saw the lightning, hundreds of miles away, twinkling and playing along the northern horizon. It was a sign--the promise of summer rain! In the morning a soft wind came stealing in from the west; a white cloud came up out of nothing and hovered against the breast of the Peaks; and the summer heat grew terrible. At noon the cloud turned black and mounted up, its fluffy summit gleaming in the light of the ardent sun; the wind whirled across the barren mesa, sweeping great clouds of dust before it, and the air grew damp and cool; then, as evening came on the clouds vanished suddenly and the wind died down to a calm. For a week the spectacle was repeated--then, at last, as if weary, the storm-wind refused to blow; the thunder-caps no longer piled up against the Peaks; only the haze endured, and the silent, suffocating heat.