THE CATTLE-SHEEP WAR Next morning before dawn a determined and desperate band of men rode from the Star Circle Ranch, under the leadership of Mart Cooley.

Whitey and Injun were wise enough not to show themselves, Whitey fearing not only that they would be forbidden to go, but that they would be sent home.

This would be mortifying, to say the least.

But if he were not forbidden--well, we all know the kinds of excuses with which we ease our consciences.
While this was going on in Whitey's mind, Bill Jordan was sleeping at the Bar O.But had Bill known whither his joke on Whitey was leading the boys, it is likely that he would not have slumbered so peacefully.
So they waited until the warlike expedition had disappeared on the rolling prairie, and then they followed at a distance.

And that was easy, for Injun could have tracked that mass of horses' hoofprints in his sleep.
Most of the time Injun and Whitey were out of sight of the cattlemen.
So in order to make this story run right along, it is necessary to tell what happened to the men while the boys were absent, all of which Injun and Whitey heard about afterwards.
It was well along in the forenoon when in the distance a mass of moving dots, with moving specks on its outskirts, indicated a flock of sheep, and spurring their horses to a gallop the men dashed toward it.