Coupled with uncertainty went the firm conviction that if Shining Mark once linked him with a knowledge of those dead cows and stolen calves, he, Robin Tyler, would need eyes in the back of his head whenever he rode alone. CHAPTER IV--ONE STEP AT A TIME The Block S outfit, far into that night, staged a good-natured minor riot in a town whose population of something less than a hundred souls was eighty per cent dependent on Block S activities for its existence. There were half a dozen small ranches within a ten mile radius, men who owned from three to five hundred head of stock. A few sheep-masters with flocks and herders and camp tenders helped put money in circulation there and lent a color--and odor--of their own to the region. Brooklyn-born fiction to the contrary, the cattleman and the sheep owner were not always at each others’ throats. The man on horseback tended to look down on the shepherd who guarded his flocks afoot. In all history the man on horseback has done that. But physical clashes between the two groups only occurred when one encroached too arrogantly on what the other deemed his inalienable rights and privileges. And all these folk lived under the tolerant shadow of Adam Sutherland, whose Block S marked the ribs of thirty thousand cattle. Sutherland owned the town site of Big Sandy. He owned the general store and operated the post office. If he didn’t own the hotel and the three saloons and the blacksmith shop it was simply because he didn’t care to bother about petty details of commerce. So Big Sandy supported a number of people and activities that were like mistletoe on the parent oak, some ornamental, some possibly useful, but a secondary growth as far as the Block S was concerned.