“Tally one T. L. four! Two T. L. four! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. two!” Sometimes a man would grin as he came back to the fire. “This here T. L. is the only thing I kin see on ary cow so fur!” quoth Len Hersey, top hand. “Ef it wasn’t put on right good we kin fix it some with a runnin’ iron. Keep about two straights in the fire.”
“Tally one three!” came a voice. “Say, Del, this here Fishhook is the plumb catchin’est road brand ary feller ever did see! Does my eyes deceive me?”
Laughter and jests, dust, noise, lowings and groanings, the clack and clatter of cattle moved into the wings, the smell of the herd blending with the odor of singed hair—all the old-time flavor of cattle work in the open—went on now, the thin wedge of tail-twisting, surly brutes pushed out of the chute gate increasing steadily. The nucleus of the Del Sol trail herd grew steadily, until finally the red sun fell below the distant screen of the live-oak groves.
“She pops!” said Del Williams.
“Shore she pops!” assented Nabours. “We’ll get the boss up a herd if we have to make ’em out of red dirt, way God made old Uncle Adam!
“Hello!” he added. “There’s the boss a-coming!”
Indeed, through the dust, wind-carried up the flat, there showed the white feet and front of Blancocito. Taisie Lockhart, again in her range clothing, stained and worn, her hair once more clubbed between her shoulders with a shoe string, rode up soberly, trotting close to the pens.
“How are you, Jim?” said she. “How are you all, men? Where’ve you been three days back?”
Jim Nabours wiped his face on the dirty kerchief he pulled around his neck.
“Where we been, Miss Taisie?” he answered. “Why, we been strolling around with our light geetars amid the cactus, a-rounding up the finest road herd ever put up in Texas.”