But at that question the Frenchman suddenly lost all his command of the English language.

“They’re Hutchins’s all right,” said Charley, who had ridden out to look at the brand painted black on the animals’ flanks.  “No go to-night,” he told the attentive herder.  “Camp here.”

He threw off his saddle.  Tom Carroll rode away to find California John.

The two together, with Ross Fletcher, whom they had stumbled upon accidentally, returned late the following afternoon.  By sunrise next morning the flocks were under way for Inyo.  The sheep strung out by the dogs went forward steadily like something molten; the sheepherders plodded along staff in hand; the rangers brought up the rear, riding.  Thus they went for the marching portions of two days.  Then at noon they topped the main crest at the broad Pass, and the sheer descents on the Inyo side lay before them.  From beneath them flowed the plains of Owen’s Valley, so far down that the white roads showed like gossamer threads, the ranches like tiny squares of green.  Eight thousand feet almost straight down the precipice fell away.  Across the valley rose the White Mountains and the Panamints, and beyond them dimly could be guessed Death Valley and the sombre Funeral Ranges.  To the north was a lake with islands swimming in it, and above it empty craters looking from above like photographs of the topography of the moon; and beyond it tier after tier, as far as the eye could reach, the blue mountains of Nevada.  A narrow gorge, standing fairly on end, led down from the Pass.  Without hesitation, like a sluggishly moving, viscid brown fluid, the sheep flowed over the edge.  The dogs, their flanking duties relieved by the walls of dark basalt on either hand, fell to the rear with their masters.  The mountain-bred horses dropped calmly down the rough and precipitous trail.

At the end of an hour the basalt gorge opened out to a wide steep slope of talus on which grew in clumps the first sage brush of the desert.  Here California John called a halt.  The line of the Reserve, unmarked as yet save by landmarks and rare rough “monuments” of loose stones, lay but just beyond.

“This is as far as we go,” he told the chief herder.

The Frenchman flashed his teeth, and bowed with some courtesy.  “Au revoi’,” said he.

“Hold on,” repeated California John, “I said this is as far as we go.  That means you, too; and your men.”

“But th’ ship!” cried the chief herder.

“My rangers will put them off the Reserve, according to regulation,” stated California John.

The Frenchman stared at him.

“W’at you do?” he gasped at last.  “Where we go?”

“I’m going to put you off the Reserve, too, but on the west side,” said California John.  The old man’s figure straightened in his saddle, and his hand dropped to the worn and shiny butt of his weapon:  “No; none of that!  Take your hand off your gun!  I got the right to use necessary force; and, by God, I’ll do it!”