Sims, without changing his position, called out to the herders. These in turn spoke to the dogs, and the dogs began to nip the heels of the leader sheep, who resented the familiarity with loud blatting and lowering of heads. But they knew the futility of resisting these nagging guardians and started to forge ahead. Other dogs got the middlers in motion, and still others attended to the tailers, so that in five minutes from the time Larkin gave the word the whole immense flock was crawling slowly over the dry plain. Eight thousand of them there were; eight thousand semi-imbecile creatures, unacquainted with the obstacles they must encounter or the dangers they must face before they could be brought to safety or lost in the attempt. And to guard them there were nearly seventy men whose fear lay not in the terrors to be met, but in the sheep themselves: for there is no such obstacle to a sheep's well-being as the sheep himself. The last flock had arrived the night before, well-fed and watered. The preceding six thousand were in good condition from days and weeks of comfortable grazing in the hills; all were in good shape to travel. In moving them at this time Larkin had seized the psychological moment. The disgruntled cattle-owners, under a guard of ten men, were resting quietly far from anything resembling excitement in one of the untracked places among the mesas and scoria buttes. Bud had ascertained, by spies of his own that scoured the country, that the great posse of rescuing cowpunchers had gone safely off on a wild-goose chase, misled by one of the sheepmen who was unknown in the country. For the present, therefore, the range was clear, and Bud reckoned on its remaining so until the cattlemen had been rescued from their durance vile. In such a time the sheep-danger shrank into insignificance, and Larkin counted on having his animals across the Bar T range before the finding of the cattlemen, after which, of course, the men would be turned loose with much commiseration and apology. Of the seventy men guarding and driving the sheep not more than thirty were regular herders. Forty were mounted and belonged to Jimmie Welsh's fighting corps, which was composed mostly of owners and superintendents from the north country. Your usual Western shepherd is not a fighting man and cases have occurred in the bitter range wars where a herder has been shot down in cold blood unable to make a defense because of the grass growing out of his rifle. Years alone in the brooding silence of the Sierra slopes or the obscure valleys of the northern Rockies take the virulence out of a man and make him placid and at one with nature. Into his soul there sinks something of the grandeur of cloud-hooded peaks, the majesty of limitless horizons and the colors of sky-blue water and greensward. With him strife is an unknown thing except for the strife of wits with another herder who would attempt to share a succulent mountain meadow.