tions will be made for it, opening the way to its triumph. It is that sanguine confidence of youth that saves the civilization of human kind.
Clemmons was not able to get out of the wagon next morning. If Rawlins had not been there it would have been a sorry day for the old man, for he had spun out the thread of his endurance against his pangs and miseries so long he hadn't the strength left in him to bend his stiffened joints and spread the sheep out while the dew was on the sage.
Rawlins volunteered to stand by until the crippled flockmaster could hire a man to follow his flock. Perhaps the young man was not entirely unselfish in the business; maybe he hoped the old man's affliction might turn out to be his own profit. It might work Clemmons round to contributing at least part of his flock to the design for breaking down sheep limit and opening that land to the oppressed.
Clemmons said if he had a rattlesnake to render down and rub the grease on his joints he would make a speedy recovery. It never had failed in the past, and he was without that specific remedy now only because he had not been able to find a snake.
That was another indication of what the Dry Wood country was coming to, Clemmons said. Time was when he was as limber as any rattlesnake that ever crawled, and look at him now! Tied up in the wagon, flat on his back, not worth the baking powder in his biscuits, and all because that country had degenerated to that low plane, under the crowding of big sheepmen and the fencing-up by land hogs, that a good, decent rattlesnake was no longer to be found.
