"And our cattle, too. How else would we know them from other people's cattle?" demanded Rhoda. "It's nowhere near so horrid as it sounds. The smart is soon over. And, really, how else could we tell the creatures apart?"
"Goodness! don't ask me" said Grace. "I am not in the cattle business."
But she confessed to Nan that she intended to shut her eyes tight when the poor little colts were to be burned, and stuff her fingers into her ears, too. However, she and the other girls were very eager to attend the round-up; and a messenger from Dan, the sub-foreman, had come in to headquarters with the announcement that the herdsmen from the combined ranches were driving down the biggest bunch of horses in a decade.
"You and your party, Rhoda, can start away in the morning, bright and early," said her father at dinner that night. "I've sent away a grub wagon and Ah Foon's right bower to cook for you. I know you'd cause a famine if you depended on the regular chuck wagon of Dan's outfit. There isn't but one sleeping tent; Walter will have to rough it."
"That will not bother me, Mr. Hammond," declared the boy. "I've camped out more than once."
"'Twon't be much of a punishment to sleep out-of-doors this weather," said the old ranchman. "All that may bother you is a tornado. We have 'em occasionally at this season."
"And what do you do when there is a tornado, Mr. Hammond?" asked
Bess, interested.
"Only one thing to do—hold tight and keep your hair on," chuckled Mr. Hammond. "If you really do get in the path of one, lie down and cling to the grass-roots till it blows over."
"Oh! A cyclone!" cried Bess.
"Not exactly. A cyclone, I reckon, is some worse. A cyclone is a twister. They say if a cyclone hits a pig end to, and the wrong way, it twists his tail to the left instead of to the right and he's never the same pig again."