They rode over a rolling bit of ground and came in sight suddenly of the great herd in care of Number Two outfit. Such a crowd of slowly moving cattle was enough to amaze the eastern visitors. For miles upon miles the great herd overspread the valley, along the far side of which the hurrying river flowed. The tossing horns, the lowing of the cows calling their young, the strange, bustling movement of the whole mass, rose up to the excited spectators in a great wave of sound and color. It was a wonderful sight!
Jib rode up the hill to meet them. The men on duty were either squatting here and there over the range, in little groups, playing cards and smoking, or riding slowly around the outskirts of the herd. There was a chuck-tent and two sleeping tents parked by the river side, and the smoke from the cook’s sheet-iron stove rose in a thin spiral of blue vapor toward that vaster blue that arched the complete scene.
“What a picture!” Ruth said to her chum. “The mountains are grand. That cañon we visited was wonderful. The great, rolling plains dwarf anything in the line of landscape that we ever saw back East. But this caps all the sights we have seen yet.”
“I’m almost afraid of the cattle, Ruthie,” declared Helen. “So many tossing horns! So many great, nervous, moving bodies! Suppose they should start this way—run us down and stamp us into the earth? Oh! they could do it easily.”
“I don’t feel that fear of them,” returned the girl from the Red Mill. “I mean to ride all around the herd to-night with Nita. She says she is going to help ride herd, and I am going with her.”
This declaration, however, came near not being fulfilled. Jib Pottoway objected. The tent brought for the girls was erected a little way from the men’s camp, and the Indian stated it as his irrevocable opinion that the place for the lady visitors at night was inside the white walls of that tent.
“Ain’t no place for girls on the night trick, Miss Jinny—and you know it,” complained Jib. “Old Bill will hold me responsible if anything happens to you.”
“‘Twon’t be the first time I’ve ridden around a bunch of beeves after sundown,” retorted Jane Ann, sharply. “And I’ve promised Ruth. It’s a real nice night. I don’t even hear a coyote singing.”
“There’s rain in the air. We may have a blow out of the hills before morning,” said Jib, shaking his head.
“Aw shucks!” returned the ranchman’s niece. “If it rains we can borrow slickers, can’t we? I never saw such a fellow as you are, Jib. Always looking for trouble.”