Though his whole being rose in revolt against the arbitrary claims of the cattle king, he had become so hardened to this injustice everywhere that he no longer wasted his time or strength in vain railings against it. Instinctively he felt that this was to be a struggle of strength against cunning, for the very thought of physical resistance to thirty fighting cowboys by half a dozen herders was ridiculous. Many similar skirmishes, both on his home ranch and on the trail, had sharpened Larkin's wits for emergencies, and it was with really no spirit of humble complaisance that he faced the future. Much, however, depended on the result of Sim's explorations. By the time Larkin arrived at the camp the visiting cowmen had disappeared. But this did not mean for a moment that they had all returned to the Bar T ranch house. Merely to top the first hill would have been to see a horse with hanging bridle, and a cow-puncher near by camped on the trail that led to the north. As fortune would have it, Sims slunk into camp just at the dinner hour. "What'd they say to yuh?" he asked abruptly. "I seen the confab from over on that hogback yonder." The herder's respect for his employer sometimes diminished to the vanishing point. "Got to clear out in twenty-four hours or take what's comin'." "What'd'ye tell 'em?" "I said we would." The lank herder started back in amazement. "Oh, blazes!" he grieved. "That I should've ever took on with a milksop boss. I'm plumb disgraced--" His voice trailed off into silence as he recognized the twinkle in Larkin's eye. "Oh, I see what yuh mean," he apologized, with a wide grin. "We'll clear out all right. Oh, yes! Sure!" He sat down. "Depends on you a good deal," remarked Bud, shoving the beans toward him. "What did you find this morning?" "Found a new way north," was the muffled and laconic reply. "Yaas," he continued presently, after regarding his reflection in the bottom of a tin cup that had been full of coffee the moment before, "an' it's over on that hogback." A "hogback," be it understood, is a rugged rocky mound, carved by weather erosion. It is the result of the level rock strata of the plains suddenly bending upward and protruding out of the earth. "That ridge runs north for about two mile, and at the end seems to turn east into the Big Horn foothills. So far as I can see, no man or critter has ever been there, for there ain't any water in that crotch, and nothin' else but heat and rattlers. The point of the thing is this: Spring rains for a couple of million years have wore a regular watercourse down that crotch, and I think we can run the sheep over it, single file." "Yes, but won't they be out on the open Bar T range when we get them over?" "No, boss. D'ye think I'd do a thing like that? Honest, the way you misjudge a man! Well, across that hogback, where it turns to the east, there is a string of range hills covered with good feed, and leadin' north, for twenty miles. My idea's this: