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“AND I’ll bet this is the sorriest herd of cows that ever was made on the soil of Texas!” There was grief in the tones of old Jim Nabours as he turned away from the dusty flat where the circling riders were holding the main body of the T. L. gathering. For many days the men had been riding mesquite thicket, timbered flat and open glade, sweeping in the cattle in a general rodeo for the making of the trail herd. This was the result.

“About one in ten of what we’d orto of had, and what she still thinks she’s got,” he added, speaking to his own trail segundo, bearded young Del Williams, as they pulled up and looked back at the cattle.

Williams nodded.

“It’s been a system,” said he. “Some one’s stripped the whole upper range. We’d orto had fifty riders instead of ten—and not a Mexican in the lot—to ride the upper water fronts. I got my own suspicions.”

“And me. But what’s the use? The war come and we couldn’t help it. But even if cows wasn’t worth a damn we ought to of knew how many we didn’t have. Till now, I never really did.”

Williams nodded. A tall, well-favored youth he was, with the gravity of the returned soldier. He still, fault of better, wore the Confederate gray. His garb was worn and patched, like that of the foreman.

“They robbed that range after the old man was killed and afore we-all got here in charge. For over two years Del Sol was let plumb alone. Laguna del Sol! Best range in Texas, and the onliest place in all Texas that ain’t boiling over with cows right now! Fours? Long threes? Beeves? How could we pick? We was lucky to get what we did, even with quite some few that don’t show T. L. any too damned plain.

“Oh, there’s over four thousand head,” Williams went on; “four thousand three hundred and forty-two is what we made it when we tallied ’em in. But sufferin’ snakes!”

“Uh-huh. There’s steers there that looks like old Colonel Cortés in the face—bet there’s a thousand head that dates back beyond the Spanish Conquest. There’s yearlings here is ten years old, and the rest perportionate. Spring calves and fours and threes and laws knows what—that’s one fine outfit to drive a thousand miles, huh?”

“Well,” said Williams soberly, “we got to tell the boss we just made it mixed, so’s’t she could suit every buyer. And damned if I don’t think she could—unless’n a buyer wanted a even lot of good fours for beeves.”

“Of course,” assented Nabours. “If only she wasn’t so hard to fool and so sot in her ways!

“Is the new chute ready?” he asked, settling back into the saddle as he uncoiled a leg from around the horn. “We’ve got to get ’em in the road brand.”

“The boys got the wings done this morning,” replied Williams. “It won’t take forever to put our Fishhook road brand over the T. L. But I’ll bet a horse there’s mossy horns in there’ll brand as hard as a tarrypin, and calves that’ll take two to hold the brand.”

In a lesser flat, a couple of miles from the home corrals, new corrals and a branding chute had hurriedly been put up by the T. L. hands for the quicker process of working the trail herd. The material was mesquite posts set deep, with cross poles lashed on with hide. A nail was a thing unknown. The two men rode along the fenced lines approvingly.

“The sher’f’s a cow hand, all right,” said Nabours. “Just how he finds time to quit the sher’f’s office is what he ain’t explained, no more’n a lot of other things. But cows he does know. He’s coming in now.”

The rider who approached them from the farther side of the flat was not easily recognizable as the same young man who had ridden alone into the Del Sol gate a fortnight or more ago. His garb now was the loose wool of the average cattle hand of the place and day, his checkerboard trousers thrust into his bootlegs. Chaparajos he did not now wear, nor did any Saxon Texans when they could avoid it. There was at that time no standardized cowboy, nor any uniform for him. Indeed, the very name of “cowboy” was unknown on the lower range. The Del Sol ranch hands were for the most part sons of neighboring ranches, most of them lank, whiskered, taciturn young men, and for the most part seedy of apparel. They came in what garb they were able to get, and they utterly lacked uniformity, beyond the fact that each could ride, rope and brand, and all were able to live on food that would have killed men less hardy.

One of such company might have been Dan McMasters now as he plodded forward, mounted on a stout grulla of his own string—a blue-crane horse such as would sometimes be seen in any large remuda. He had appeared at Del Sol a week earlier than he had promised, but had forbidden the men to announce him at the house. He had lived with the cattle hands, and wished his presence to be unknown, he said, until after the herd was on its way. All for reasons which he did not declare.

He was taciturn and mysterious as ever to Jim Nabours, and the latter also grew chary of speech. Low as his own resources were, it did not wholly please him that, stacked up in two newly arrived trail wagons near the home corral, were supplies enough to run the outfit through to Abilene. It pleased him no more that if the Del Sol remuda now carried under its own road brand another brand, that brand should be the McMasters Circle Arrow, which was ranged in Gonzales County, far below. Del Sol had never borrowed, never been obliged.

“Amigos! Caballeros!” McMasters waved a hand as he drew near.

Del Williams looked at him in silence, nor was Nabours at first much more communicative.

“Well,” he said at length, “that there bunch of cows is what we call our trail herd. I expect they’d all hold still and let us brand ’em standing. The boss don’t suspect nothing but what this here herd is all select fours. Well, let her think so. Grass is up strong here, and we’ll not ketch it as we move north. So let’s push this here Noah’s-ark outfit into the pens and get it in the Fishhook soon’s the Lord’ll let us!”

“Well, we’ve all done our best,” commented McMasters.

Nabours looked at him dourly.

“Ef we wasn’t broke,” said he, “you couldn’t of done as much as I’ve let you. Anyhow I didn’t take all the beans and molasses you sont up—there’s half in your wagon yet, and I want you to send it back home. Besides, I won’t take no wagon from you; we got our own carts, and them’s good enough. Horses, now—why, yes, I’ll take the loan of them, fer maybe you can sell ’em north. I don’t want to hit Aberlene with a bunch of sore backs. Ef you got some horses, anywheres, why, there you are; but ef you’ve et up all the chuck, why, where are you? We maybe couldn’t never pay that back—I don’t know. So you jest send you own wagon back home while you got it.”

“Well, all right,” replied McMasters, slightly changing color. “You know, of course, I’m not pushing anything on you. I don’t want your employer to know anything about it. And I know you-all have done your best.”

“Yes, I reckon we have. We’re not hardly leaving a hen wrangler at Del Sol—taking the whole force and family and most of the furniture, down to Miss Taisie’s trunk. Buck Talley, our Senegambian chief, he’d of died if he hadn’t got to go on as cook. Milly can drive one carreta, and old Anita don’t know nothing better’n to set on the seat of a carreta and talk Spanish to them oxens. Ef we don’t make Aberlene it’s because there ain’t no Aberlene. Here we come, forty-five hundred cows, ef ye don’t mind calling ’em that, sixteen more or less human cow hands, nineteen kinds of rifles and six-shooters, a hundred and fifteen saddle ponies and the only red-headedest boss in all Texas, which is a girl. God bless our home!

“Speaking of hair, did either of you-all ever notice Miss Taisie’s sort of hair?” he demanded, suddenly turning.

McMasters made no comment. Del Williams only looked at Nabours.

“Well, you see, her hair is plumb long and plumb straight, except at the far end it curls up, like a drake’s tail. You see that? You know what that means? Well, any woman that has hair like that can practice magic. I read that in a dream book oncet. Them sort is witches, and it’s no manner of use trying to stop ’em. That’s what the book said. Living along twenty-two year with Miss Taisie, taking out three I spent in the war, I’m here to say the book didn’t tell no lie. So here we all are, sixteen fools that can’t no ways help theirselves, all along of the boss having that kind of red hair that curls up on the end. Well, like you say, we all done our best. I can’t look fifty horses and two wagons of grub in the mouth—not yet.

“Del, ride back and tell the boys to throw the herd all closter to the road chute. Let’s get as many as we can in the iron before she gets too dark to work. We’ll put half at roping and branding on the flat and the balance can work ’em through the chute.”

The three turned toward the dust cloud where the main herd was held by the men. A rider was coming out, top speed.

“Hello!” began Nabours. “What’s a-eating him?”

The horseman drew up his mount squatting, throwing up a hand—old Sanchez, all his life a Del Sol rider, and the only Mexican allowed to go with the trail herd.

“Pronto, Señor Jeem!” he called. “Los hombres—baja!” He pointed to the herd.

“What hombres, Sanchez? What’s up?”

“Los hombres—they cutta our herd!”

“Cut our herd—what’s that?”

“Read-a our brand—cutta our herd. They say-a we gotta their vacas. They goin’ take!”

“Cut our herd? On our own ground. Not none! The man don’t live that’s going to cut a Del Sol herd without my consent and my help. Come on!”

He set spurs, rode through the thin fringe of mesquite that made the shortest path.

“Come on, McMasters!” he called across his shoulder. “I want you for witness here!”

But as he and his two riders burst free and spurred down the slope to where the great herd was made he looked back, not hearing hoof beats. McMasters was not with them.

“I’ll be damned!”

Nabours smothered the remainder of a volley of hot-headed oaths. He did not understand a man who sidestepped when he was needed.