Which was an oblique way of anticipating days in the saddle and nights on guard while the Block S combed the range for marketable beeves.
In twenty minutes silence fell on the camp. The men were in their blankets. The nighthawk relieved the day wrangler and moved his horse herd away from about the tents. A moon swam up and Shadow Butte cast a long black cone toward the northwest. Bells tinkled with distant sweetness where the ponies grazed. Midnight passed. When the few hours of darkness began to wane a lantern broke out yellow in the cook tent. As the first paleness showed in the east the cook lifted his call.
In less than an hour, with the sun heaving up above the sky line the outfit was under way, all their equipment, tents, cooking layout, beds, extra ropes and gear piled high and lashed on two wagons drawn by four-horse teams.
There were few trails and those dim ones over that sparsely settled land. One rider acted as pilot across country. In his wake the chuck wagon led the van. Behind this rattled the bed wagon driven by the nighthawk. Behind these came the saddle herd, urged on by the horse wrangler with a trailing rope. Last of all the riders mounted, shook the kinks out of their fractious horses and broke into a gallop. Some passed the remuda and the wagons. Some jogged leisurely. They rode as they pleased, in pairs, in clusters, at a walk or a gallop.
Robin found himself riding elbow to elbow with Mark Steele, “Shining” Steele. Appropriate name, apart from the beaten silver ornaments with which he adorned his gear, even to a row of conchos down the outer seam of his leathern chaps, for the man himself was like a steel blade, tall, lithe, thin-faced, a rider born and a cowman from his heels up. Mark Steele had come into the Bear Paws unheralded and unsung, and in two years had become range boss of the Block S over the heads of older hands.
He jogged beside Robin, hat pushed back, swaying to the gait of his horse, humming a little tune, his eyes roving over what spread before them as they topped each little rise.
“Mayne give you a good mount, kid?” he asked presently.
“Thirteen head. And I brought along a ridge runner of my own,” Robin answered.
“Uh-huh. You won’t be afoot, then, half the time, like you was with the Pool last spring.”
Mark said it with a smile but there was a sting in the remark, an implied sneer. Robin had joined the general round-up with the Bear Paw Pool that spring, having only ten horses in his mount. Of these one had gone crazy with loco weed, another grew lame. He rode the remaining eight to a standstill trying to hold up his end with men far better mounted. It was neither his fault nor Dan Mayne’s—just ill luck. Saddle horses had vanished, others had got crippled. There was no time to break colts. But both Robin and the Bar M Bar had lost a modicum of prestige. He didn’t thank Steele for reminding him. He knew that with his present string he could take the outside circle and come into camp with the best of the Block S. So he kept silent.