They were cattlemen to the marrow in their bones, and they gloried in their prejudice against the woolly despoilers of the range.
All these years had the Flying U been immune from the nuisance, save for an occasional trespasser, who was quickly sent about his business.

The Flying U range had been kept in the main inviolate from the little, gray vandals, which ate the grass clean to the sod, and trampled with their sharp-pointed hoofs the very roots into lifelessness; which polluted the water-holes and creeks until cattle and horses went thirsty rather than drink; which, in that land of scant rainfall, devastated the range where they fed so that a long-established prairie-dog town was not more barren.

What wonder if the men who owned cattle, and those who tended them, hated sheep?
So does the farmer dread an invasion of grasshoppers.
A mile down the coulee they came upon the band with two herders and four dogs keeping watch.

Across the coulee and up the hillsides they spread like a noisome gray blanket.

"Maa-aa, maa-aa, maa-aa," two thousand strong they blatted a strident medley while they hurried here and there after sweeter bunches of grass, very much like a disturbed ant-hill.
The herders loitered upon either slope, their dogs lying close beside them.