1898. Two sheep farmers and their sheepdogs engage in a years-long battle to prove their superiority in handling sheep-a battle which ultimately must end in death. The story begins: The sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse lying long and low in the shadow of the Muir Pike; on the ruins of peel-tower and barmkyn, relics of the time of raids, it looked; on ranges of whitewashed outbuildings; on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks. In the stack-year, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men were thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level.