Whitey and Injun managed to go with Buck Milton’s men, as Whitey liked Buck better than any of the other punchers, but the death of Tom had left Buck in a gloomy mood, and he spoke but little, either to the men or to the boys.  The others were loud in their oaths and threats of vengeance; Buck was silent—­and somehow, Whitey could not help feeling that Buck was the most dangerous enemy the sheepmen would have to deal with.

This round-up lasted a full week.  During it Walt Lampson had found time to consider his course of action against the stampeders of his herd.  So when Whitey and Injun returned, they found that the Star Circle was to be involved in one of the scourges of the time—­a range war.

If you had been there would you have wanted to stay and see the thing out?  The answer is so simple that you know what Whitey and Injun wanted to do.  But Whitey knew that hardened as Walt Lampson was, he would not allow the boys to accompany the coming expedition against the sheepmen, so Injun and Whitey did what you probably would have done, and what Br’er Rabbit did—­they lay low.  And Walt either forgot to send them home, or thought that they would stay at the Star Circle while the war was on.

For two days after the round-up nothing was done at the ranch, beyond the oiling of guns, and consultations among the men.  Walt Lampson seemed to be waiting for something.  On the third night there was a meeting in the ranch-house living-room.  A meeting which Whitey and Injun attended unseen, by the simple method of hiding.  It may have been wrong to listen, but it was worse to die, and Whitey felt that he surely would expire if he didn’t know what was going on.  Injun had no scruples at all.

A traveler might have thought that all trails led to the Star Circle Ranch, that gloomy night, for from every point of the compass came riders, alone, by twos, and by threes.  Desperate, hard men, who had used their bodily strength to conquer the elements and to build up their herds, as mine-owners use machinery to crush the gold out of the ore.  For this war of the sheep against the cattle was a common war, and it was to be fought to a finish in that country.

So that was what Walt was waiting for, thought Whitey as he looked into the living-room from a crack in the office door, held slightly ajar.  Had Whitey been in a criminal court during the last appeal of opposing counsel, he would have seen in the jury box no more thoughtful, set, and determined faces than those assembled in that ranch-house room.

The decision this court reached was:  to catch the culprits and hang them; to drive their sheep over the hills into the deepest canyons to die by thousands; to hunt out the hiding owners, and let Colt guns be both judge and jury.  Merciless and hard it seems, doesn’t it?  But those were merciless and hard days, when “only the strong survived.”

“There’s just one man I ever knowed who could do this work right,” Walt Lampson said.  “The greatest two-handed man with a gun that ever was born, an’ a fool jury sent him to the pen, five years ago, for brandin’ a few calves.”