“No.”
Nabours shut his lips grimly; then, as usual when in trouble, broke out into song: “Oh, granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite, dog bite? Granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite me?”
“Leave me shoot all them calfs, Mr. Nabours,” urged Sid Collins. “They kain’t walk, an’ they ain’t wuth a damn. Then the cows’d behave.”
“It’s what we shore orto do,” agreed Nabours. “They hold up the herd. But we need every critter we got. Maybe we’ll find somebody to trade ’em to fer something.”
“Why don’t we cut back all the she-stuff an’ on’y drive steers, Mr. Jim?”
“Because ef we left a cow or a calf on Del Sol this spring, by fall neither’d be on our range. As well as clean it and let it take a chance as have thieves do it for us. No, ef our calfs die, I’m going to die ’em as fur north as I can. Yes, and ef ary one of ’em dies I’m going to run the T. L. iron on him after he dies—and, yes, the Fishhook road brand over that—so’s’t the buzzards’ll know whose stock they’re a-eating of! My good Lord! . . . Oh, granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite——”
He rode on back, through the thinning dust. The two carts were still a mile behind. He could see the white-band horse ridden by the mistress of Del Sol.
There were sixteen men on the T. L. herd. Sixteen loved Taisie Lockhart in sixteen ways, save for the one element of fiercely reverent loyalty. This grizzled old foreman loved her as his child. His brows narrowed, his grim mouth shut tight under the graying beard as he approached the slender figure which came on, facing her great road into the unknown.
“Push on up, Miss Taisie,” called Nabours. “Yore place is at the head. We’ll see nothing hurts ye.”
“I don’t want to ride front,” replied the girl. “You’ve got men enough there. Who’s riding point besides Del?”