"Well," responded Hardy, "of course there are several things you _might_ do to accommodate me, but maybe you wouldn't mind telling me how you got in here, just for instance?" "Always glad to 'commodate--where I can, of course," returned the sheepman grimly. "I came in over the top of them Four Peaks yonder." "Um," said Hardy, glancing up at the rocky walls. "Then you must've had hooks on your eyebrows, for sure. I suppose the rest of the family is coming, too! And, by the way, how is my friend, Mr. Swope?" He appended this last with an artless smile, quite lacking in bitterness, but somehow the boss herder felt himself discredited by the inquiry, as if he were consorting with thieves. It was the old shame of the sheepman, the shame which comes to the social outcast, and burns upon the cheek of the dishonored bastard, but which is seared deepest into the heart of the friendless herder, the Ishmaelite of the cow-country, whose hand is against every man and every man's against him. Hunger and thirst he can endure, and the weariness of life, but to have all men turn away from him, to answer him grudgingly, to feed him at their table, but refuse themselves to eat, this it is which turns his heart to bitterness and makes him a man to be feared. As Thomas had looked at this trim young cowboy, smooth-shaven and erect, sitting astride a blooded horse which snorted and pawed the ground delicately, and then had glanced at the low and brutal Mexicans with whom his lot was cast, a blind fury had swept over him, wreaking its force upon his own retainers; and now, when by implication he was classed with Jim Swope, he resented it still more bitterly. "Dam'fino," he answered sullenly. "Haven't seen 'im for a month." "Oh, isn't he with you this trip?" asked Hardy, in surprise. "I had hoped that I might find him up here." There was a suggestion of irony in his words which was not lost upon the _mayordomo_, but Thomas let the remark pass in silence. "Perhaps his brother Jasper is along," ventured Hardy. "No? Well, that's Jim's earmark on those sheep, and I know it. What's the matter?" "Matter with what?" growled Thomas morosely. "Why, with Jim, of course. I thought after the pleasant times we had together last Spring he'd be sure to come around. In fact," he added meaningly, "I've been looking for him." At this naive statement, the sheepman could not restrain a smile. "You don't know Jim as well as I do," he said, and there was a suggestion of bitterness in his voice which Hardy was not slow to note. "Well, perhaps not," he allowed; "but you know, and I know, that this is no pleasure trip you're on--in fact, it's dangerous, and I never thought that Jim Swope would send a man where he was afraid to go himself. Now I've got nothing against you, Mr. Thomas, and of course you're working for him; but I ask you, as a man, don't you think, after what I've done for him, that Jim Swope ought to come along himself if he wants to sheep me out?