Along the banks of the Yellowstone, where it wended its snakelike course to the Missouri, wandered the massive herds of the Star Circle, and around them rode the cow waddies, the few outriders, keeping their charges from straying, and ever watchful for the dreaded sheep, which had of late sprung up like buffalo grass, and, as Buck Milton expressed it, "in a country that God had made for cows." And over the range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to the applause of thousands. They acted in the dark, if they could, and for hire, and yet they may have had hearts--but those who hired them surely had none. And all unconscious of coming danger the boys rode with the few herders, or by themselves, near the wandering cattle. The storm had held off while twilight faded, but now the sky was cloud-curtained, and the night fell inky black and silent save for sounds from the herd. The soft thudding of hoofs, the occasional low-voiced note, possibly of a cow to its young, seemed to blend into a murmur, strange and fascinating to Whitey, commonplace and tiresome to the men of the range. Then the storm began to send signals of its approach from air and sky. First the hushing of the wind, then the pale glares from the distant sky where the earth's edge joined it, then the rumble of thunder, growing in volume with the brighter, green flashes of the lightning--all familiar enough to Whitey, but now giving him a thrill because felt in strange surroundings. The nervous stirring of the mass of beasts near by added to the boy's thrill, for a coming storm was never to be taken calmly by the hulking, helpless brutes. And when the rush of wind and the crashing of the coming tempest sounded, and the herders were renewing their watchfulness, another storm was breeding that they did not dream of. For over beyond, in a gully, the sheepmen were gathered. And each man carried a white garment, like those you may have seen pictured as worn by the old raiders of the South--the Ku-Klux Klan. They were waiting only for the lightning to become blinding, the thunder to become deafening. And when the electrical storm was at its height, you will know what happened when those white-clad figures went among the thousands of range-bred beasts, guarded by a pitiful handful of men. For range cattle are accustomed to a man only when he is mounted; then he is a part of his horse. It is dangerous for him to go among them on foot; then he is a strange animal. Many a cowboy has dismounted, rescued a steer from the mire--and had to run for his life. Thus were those white-clad figures doubly monstrous and terrifying to the herd.