“Take your dirty claw off me!” snapped the saintly Patrick O’Neill, as he threw off Peterson’s hand. “No sheep are on your grazing ground, and you know it. And I think,” he added meaningly, “if you’d count your cattle, you’d find you were getting your money’s worth of grass, all right!” “Yes, my cows ate grass before you come here an’, by damn, they eat grass when you go! Maybe you charge money for breathin’ air! Maybe——” “And if I did, I’d collect the same, remember that! I’m running this proposition, my fine bully, as you’ll find out if you stick around a while. You’re going to pay for the grass your cows eat on the national forest—and you’ll pay for the cows on the range, mind you! As for the sheep—— Well, I’m running that end of it, too.” “Yes, you’ll be runnin’ out of this country!” Peterson bellowed truculently, his red face thrust close to the blazing eyes of Ranger O’Neill. “We don’t need no damn forest ranger in here as a boss. We can run our cows without help from the government, and we’ll run you out just like we ran out the other damn rangers!” “And when,” grated Patrick O’Neill, no longer wishing to be counted a saint, “do you expect to start running me out?” “I’ll start now!” bawled Peterson, as he dived forward with outstretched arms for the grappling hold which was his pet way of crushing an enemy. Patrick O’Neill stepped backward and waited until the huge arms had all but embraced him. Then he lifted his right knee sharply, grabbed Peterson’s head and jerked it down upon that knee. The impact was terrific. The big rancher staggered back with a roar of pain and baffled rage, and as he straightened, he got a frightfully direct blow in his middle and another on the jaw that snapped his head backward. A second blow found the big jaw, and Peterson of the Box S, bully of the Stillwater District, crumpled down in a heap and lay there. “Git him!” yelled a lanky cow-puncher, one of Boyce’s riders, as Patrick O’Neill knew well. The puncher came in with a sideswipe, two others at his heels. Patrick O’Neill grinned and gave him the neatest uppercut West Point boxers could teach him. A man at his right tried to trip him, while the Boyce man came in again, and it was right then that the spirit of all the wild, fighting O’Neills came into its own. Young Patrick—no more a saint—lost a sleeve from his coat, which was likewise split up the back to his collar. He barked a knuckle against a man’s teeth—who thereafter grew a mustache to hide the gap in his grin—and his lip was cut where a flailing fist found him. But, oh, how the fighting spirit of all the Irish O’Neills did glory in the fray! “Cleaned ’em cleaner than a new shotgun!” the postmaster reported the incident to his wife that night. Ranger Patrick O’Neill did not whistle a love tune as he rode home with his mail, but that was chiefly because of his swollen lip, for the fighting spirit of the O’Neills once aroused was hard to down.