"Well, it was this way. I kept a few thousand sheep up there in my valley. In the Summer we went up the mountain, followin' the grass, and in the Winter we fed down below, where the ground was bare. It never got very cold, and my sheep was used to it, anyhow. The Navajos don't move their sheep south, do they? Well, they're away north of where I was. We jest give 'em a little shelter, and looked after 'em, and, as I says, I was doin' fine--up to last year." He paused again, with his secret on his lips, and once more Hardy supplied the helping word. "And what happened then?" he asked. "What happened then?" cried Thomas, his eyes burning. "Well, _you_ ought to know--I was sheeped out." "Sheeped out? Why, how could that happen? You were a sheepman yourself!" The boss herder contemplated him with an amused and cynical smile. "You ask Jim Swope," he suggested. For a minute Hardy sat staring at him, bewildered. "Well," he said, "_I_ can't figure it out--maybe you wouldn't mind telling me how it happened." "Why hell, man," burst out the sheepman, "it's as plain as the nose on your face--I didn't belong to the Association. All these big sheepmen that drive north and south belong to the Sheepmen's Protective Association, and they stand in with each other, but we little fellows up in 'Pache County was nobody. It's about ten years ago now that the Swope outfit first came in through our country; and, bein' in the sheep business ourselves, we was always friendly, and never made no trouble, and naturally supposed that they'd respect our range. And so they did, until I found one of Jim's herders in on my ranch last Summer. "Well, I thought there was some misunderstandin', but when I told him and his _compadres_ to move it was a bad case of 'No savvy' from the start; and while I was monkeyin' around with them a couple of more bands sneaked in behind, and first thing I knew my whole lower range was skinned clean. Well, sir, I worked over one of them _paisanos_ until he was a total wreck, and I took a shot at another _hombre_, too--the one that couldn't savvy; but there was no use cavin' round about it--I was jest naturally sheeped out. "It looked like I was busted, but I wouldn't admit it, and while I was studyin' on the matter along comes Jim himself and offers me five thousand dollars for my sheep. They was worth ten if they was worth a cent, all fine and fat; but my winter feed was gone and of course I was up against it. I see somethin' would have to be done, and dam' quick, too; so I chased down to St. John and tried to git a higher bid. But these sheepmen stand in with each other on a proposition like that, and I couldn't git nawthin'. "'All right,' I says to Jim, 'take 'em, and be dam'ed to you.' "'The price has gone down,' says Jim. 'I'll give you four thousand.' "'_What!_' I says. "'Three thousand,' says Jim.