"Huh! if you west-side rangers had kept them San Joaquin Bascos at home where they belong, then Old Useless wouldn't have been shot at last week."

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What's that? Who's Useless?" "He's the other ranger on this side a bully good old cowboy from White Mountain way, over there in Nevada. They don't make better men. An' he's down at Independence now, laid up a while, because of the scrimmage with some Basco sheep-herders up by Convict Lake. He druv five of them out of the Reserve with all their sheep. But some one took a shot at him from the brush next night; now he'll have a game leg for keeps. Hit his horse, and the horse fell over on him." "Too bad, Inyo; tell him we won't forget that," said the west-side ranger. Stand up to them. Guess this job is no picnic anywhere on old San Joaquin." "You bet not! So long, Fresno. I'll drop over myself, some of these days."

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Turning back towards Independence, the young Inyo ranger rode on, thinking about his work. Three or four days'

travel it was from one end of his "beat" to the other; he was not often able to make the round in a week, and somehow the sheep-men always seemed to know where he was, no matter how quietly he went his ways. Watching eyes and listening ears, as he often thought, were everywhere, and always on the side of the Bascos.

A few days later the Inyo ranger was at the Lone Pine post-office. "Letter for you, Smith," said the storekeeper.

He took the official envelope, full of inclosures, and went outside in the sage brush to open it. Caution had grown to be second nature with him. He read the letter twice, very slowly; he looked over the inclosures, and rode off, thinking about them. "The Boss writes me from Fresno," he soliloquized, "that the Bascos are going to behave after this. . . . And their bank over in Kern wants money real quick, so the Boss says to let all the good Bascos cross right over next month, and save them the long drive south and west around by the desert, below the southern end of the Sierras.

"And he's sent permits for the worst bunch on earth. Sent me copies. Says they're reformed. Guess the Boss is fooled this time. All them big French

sheep-men has money in bank, good an' ahead; their banks don't crowd them that way. It's a put-up game to feed right acrost on all the mountain meadows, and put the laugh on all the Inyo rangers. Yes, an' pile up on them Fresno rangers later."

Plain Ranger Smith, as direct and solid as his name, rode on and on, thinking about it. Once or twice he read the official letter again, till he knew it by heart. Ranger Charles M. Smith:

Dear Sir-The unfortunate difficulties between the Government and the Basque sheepowners are now ended. I am positively they are allowed to drive across once more, assured on the very best authority that, if so as to sell early and meet their pressing bank obligations, they will never trespass again, and will to a large extent go out of the sheep business after this season.

I have therefore issued crossing permits to twelve leading Basques, and I send copies to you. The date for entry is on the permits, and of course you will not let any one trespass before that time. If any sheep-men willfully allow their flocks to trespass, you will tell them that there will be a way found to cancel their crossing permits, and you will notify me to that end.

"The Boss means perfectly well," said the Inyo ranger at last. "He always does. But he's like a child in this game; there's men playing it just now. Mutton's going up fast; them sheep-men want their sheep near market. That's all, And they can start over September 15 and take all the time they need. That means that the Government just gives them a month's feed and puts a thousand dollars in each owner's pocket."

He slowly repeated from the official letter: "Ef-sheep-men-trespass-before-there will be a way found to cancel their permits. A-way-found-sure," he broke out joyfully; "sure there will be a way found, even ef Smith gets fired from this job.

"The main thing is to do right and keep the Government from bein' fooled. Wish I had time to go an' talk this over with Old Useless. It would tickle him a heap."

Meanwhile, fifty miles north, and close to the forest, by a mountain lake were the sheep of Arbie, the Basque. A little man riding a donkey and carrying a collie pup in his arms had just come in from Bishop with a letter. Arbie read it with deep satisfaction, and muttered approval of the

results of the hundred dollars paid to a Bakersfield lawyer to work this permit business through.

"Now we start Fish Creek to-morrow, six thousand sheep; feed dat out, come back outside forest an' meet dat fool ranger; get new start, more feed; go over Mammoth Pass and Jackass to Valley. Got Government dis time."

His herders grinned with full appreciation of the joke on Uncle Sam. If the old romance of Atlantis be resting on fact, and these little hairy men of strange speech and stranger traditions are really descended from the mountain shepherds of that ancient continent, then one can understand them better. They have learned for thousands of years the art of gypsy living; dog, sheep, goat, and burro have been especially theirs, and they have very quietly evaded every tax, every tariff, every disliked regulation of every successive government all these thousands of years.

Arbie sat by the fireside, secretly exulting, till, as his face relaxed, the cunning of Ulysses the Greek came visibly forth, so that his herders dimly felt and admired his prehistoric genius for devious triumphs.

For years unnumbered Arbie had done the thing to which he had set his heart, in old Spain, in Mexico, in Baja California, and now in the Sierras. Greatly had he prospered, but still he wore old rags, walked with his sheep, and camped with his herders. It was said that he knew these mountains better than any hunter, prospector, surveyor, or ranger could ever know them; that he could move a rock or log, or lift a screen of boughs, and work his sheep into nameless and hitherto unviolated mountain pastures high among the alpine lakes.

Among all the Basques, the names of Arbie, Astier, Soldenbere, and Bidegare stood first, for their sheep always came out in the best shape, and brought the most money. Among the dozen Basques who had crossing permits, these four seemed to the Inyo ranger the most impossible to trust out of sight. As he rode along the mountain base north, taking no trail, making no visible camp, his thoughts were very busy with all the sheep camps so conspicuously placed well outside the Reserve, but mainly with that "Arbie crowd," as he termed it.

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He turned west from Little Round Valley, and for a while threaded the Mono Pass Trail; then he worked northwest, through all sorts of rock an' brush," as he said to himself. He blindfolded his horse now and then, he took "slide rock chances;" he crept and crawled until he reached the high vantage-point that he desired. Fish Valley, the trails thereto, and all the Basque camps could be picked out far and fine.

Something was moving over there; a gray line slipping and winding down over a dark rock. Some one's band of sheep was coming into the Reserve, bound for the untrodden meadows of Fish Creek. There was a little meadow half-way down, and there they would camp. To-morrow they would go on to the larger pastures.

"Ef it's Arbie," thought the Inyo ranger, "he's got six thousand sheep. He'll stay in for a day or two, an' go on west, hopin' his permit 'll carry him through, or he'll feed it out and go back, and trust to my not finding his trail.

"It's an awful lot of nerve he has, and I suppose he thinks he can swindle any ranger."

Thus reflecting, he worked nearer and nearer all that day, built no camp-fire at night, and finally sized up the situation without being discovered.

"And," as he told Useless later, "it's down in the story books that it's nothin' to scout an' keep from lighting a fire. But my meat was raw bacon, and I couldn't make coffee, so I lived for two days on a handful of crackers. Them Bascos could have seen or smelt smoke from wherever I was."

"This is how it is," said the ranger from his outlook the next morning. "It's Arbie, and he's goin' back, 'cause the feed's poor and the coyotes plenty; he thinks I'll be along up by the main road, and he wants to talk good and flash that permit on me. I hate like sin to see him feeding his sheep down there, but I can't handle that permit if I close in on him now.

"That official letter is all right, after all," he continued. "There will be-a way-found-to cancel your permit." He slipped back into the brush and worked his way out across ridges and gulches to a trail; he made a great circle southward and eastward until he reached an Inyo County road, and then turned north again.

And the last look he had taken over the Fish Creek country had shown him that the lesser bands of sheep, after feeding half way up the western rise from the valley, were slowly circling back to the main line of meadows below. In three days more, as he thought, Arbie would be outside of the Reserve again, somewhere below Mammoth.

It was with a feeling of simple and honest pride that he saw he had guessed correctly about Arbie's plans, and a more comfortable ranger never pushed through brush to a road. Once fairly on the way, he stopped, built a fire, fried some bacon, made coffee, and thought of what he could say to Arbie a few days later.

"That permit! Oh, that darned permit!" he murmured to himself.

The Inyo ranger looked after other forest matters for a couple of days. Then he swung north again, to look up Arbie. Before long he came to a settler's cabin, and halted there.

"Howdy, Mrs. Mary Wilson! Do a favor to a poor old ranger?"

She laughed, but looked kindly at the tall, brown-eyed young man of the desert edges. She, too, was Inyo-bred, and they had gone to school together.

He unstrapped his belt; he gave her pistol and cartridges. "There, Mrs. Wilson, I have to see some Bascos pretty soon. You keep that for me. I think I'll go without a gun this time. The little old nickel badge is good enough."

Then he rode off. But when she told her husband about it that night, he shook his head gravely. "That's no way for an Inyo boy to do. Them sheep-men's gettin' worse every year. I can't make my fences tight enough to keep their sheep out of my alfalfa as they work up to Mono Lake and back."

Another day passed, and Arbie, sitting in his camp outside the forest, saw a horseman coming north along the county

"Some one

A little later

road through Long Valley. from Bishop," he thought. he saw that it was the Inyo ranger. The sheep, in three bands, were scattered over the wide plain, and all were a mile or two outside the Reserve line. The hour was just after dinner. The herders had come to camp, for there was nothing to trouble the sheep. A more peaceful pastoral scene never existed.

Arbie went forward to greet the Inyo ranger; cheerful, friendly, hospitable was every one. The Inyo ranger had to go right on north to Mono; was there anything he could do for Mr. Arbie ?

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Yes, there certainly was. Had the ranger received any mail in Bishop? No? Then maybe a Government letter referring to Mr. Arbie's sheep had not reached him. Me, Arbie, good man-good friend dis Government. Government man say t'ank you, send paper go home across mountains, feed sheep all way. Dat right? You make no row? I got paper."

The big Inyo ranger began to see a little daylight. He beamed lazily on the camp, and drew up a knee as he sat his horse.

"That sounds all right, Arbie," he con ceded. "You needn't be worried none about my puttin' up a fight." He ran his eye down the line: one cook at the fire, three idle herders lounging on the ground in front of the tent-four men besides Arbie.

"Why, Arbie, I couldn't shoot anybody if I tried. Stopped carryin' a gun." He swung up his arms and showed his beltless waist. "We folks are all gettin' to be neighbors. Jest let me look at your paper, an' I'll hike along."

Arbie went into the tent and came out with an official envelope. He gave the permit it contained to the ranger and smiled in blissful content.

The Inyo ranger looked around him, slowly and yet keenly. Yes, rifle and pistols in the tent. All the men wore knives-and what was a ranger, anyhow?

It happened that a shrewd, careless spur touch made his horse whirl and press back across the tent-front. The ranger spoke low and very quietly.

"Arbie, I want you to read this, and I want to tell all of you about it. Ask your cook to come over here, too.