CHAPTER XIV.
THE STAMPEDE 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.