The nine men of the Steering Wheel had a sinecure over the winter. Rock took to speculating on what brought that particular one-horse cow outfit all the way to Canada, when there were magnificent ranges to be had for the taking south of the line. None of the men knew who owned the Steering Wheel. A typical Texan, tall, thin-faced, with a drawly voice, and a good-natured soul, who knew cattle, ran the outfit. When a man needed money to buy goods at the fort, Dave Wells produced cash. His reticence discouraged curiosity. Rock, who knew the cow business both in practice and in theory, wondered at this dead silence—this absence of outlined plan. Twelve hundred cattle didn’t need nine riders in comparative idleness.
This gave him a good excuse in April for leaving. When he told Wells, that individual looked thoughtful.
“I sho’ don’t need eight riders right along,” he said. “I kept yo’ boys over the winter, mostly because I didn’t want to turn yo’ loose in a country where they’s no chance for a job. I’m aimin’ to let four of yo’ go. But not for a spell. I’d like for yo’ to stay on three-fo’ weeks yet. I got to take a pasear after some stock. If yo’ drift back across the line in May, yo’ll still be able to get on as hands with some round-up.”
Rock agreed. May would do as well as April. He had written once to Uncle Bill Sayre, and had received a reply. If he got around to the Maltese Cross range that summer, it would be good enough.
Immediately thereafter, Dave Wells flung his men out on a horse-gathering expedition. The Steering Wheel ponies were brought in by tens and dozens. They ranged uniformly within ten miles of the ranch. Most of the cattle grazed in the same area. And, as soon as forty horses were in the pasture, Wells organized a pack outfit, took four men with him, and vanished.
He left a red-headed youth in nominal charge. The duties of the riders left at home were to build an extension of the pole pasture and to gather the rest of the Steering Wheel saddle stock. Thereafter they were to scout around the outer fringes of the range and throw all cattle close home.
“The old he-coon gone South for another trail herd?” Billy Gore asked the deputy foreman, once he was in Rock’s hearing.
“Naw,” the red-headed one divulged the first information. “Said he was goin’ somewhere after a bunch of doggies.”
“Doggy” in range parlance meant farm cattle, scrubs, nondescript stock generally, sometimes cheaply bought to help stock a range.