“You see that these mules get started, will you, Pat? I’m going to sleep. They’ll tag along after the chuck wagon if you’ll start ’em once,” said the night wrangler. Discipline did not allow the night wrangler a name. He stretched out luxuriously, his broad hat over his face.
Johnny and Pat—Pat was the horse wrangler—hitched the four mules to the chuck wagon, after which Pat rounded up his scattered charges and drove them down to the lake for water.
All this time the red-head cook had been stowing away his housekeeping, exactly three times as fast as you would expect three men to do it. A good cook, a clean cook, swiftest of all cooks, Enriquez—also despot and holy terror as a side line. Henry was the human hangnail. It is a curious thing that all round-up cooks are cranks; a fact which favors reflection. If it be found that cooking and ferocity stand in the relation of cause to effect, a new light is thrown on an old question.
The last Dutch oven was stowed away, the lid of the chuck box snapped shut and locked. Johnny tossed the few remaining beds up to the cook.
“Do we fill the barrel here, Henry?”
“No. Dees water muddy. Preisser Lake she am deep and clean. De company ees buil’ a dam dere, yes. Han’ me dees lines. You Mag! Jake! Rattle yo’ hocks!”
With creaking of harness and groaning of axle, the chuck wagon led off on a grass-grown road winding away to the northwest, a faint track used only by the round-up; travel kept to the old Santa Fé trail, to the west, beyond the railroad. Johnny started the other team. Unguided, the bed wagon jounced and bumped over grassy hummocks until it reached the old road and turned in contentedly at the tail of the chuck wagon. The sleeping wrangler mumbled, rolled precariously on his high lurching bed, and settled back to sleep.
Johnny laughed and rode ahead to help Pat. They drove the horses in a wide detour round the slow-grazing day herd. But the chuck wagon held the right of way over everything; when it came to pass the herd an hour or two later, it would be for the herd to swerve aside.
The sun was high and hot now; Preisser Hill, a thin long shadow, rose dim above the plain; Upham tower and tank loomed high and spectral, ahead and at the left.
“How do I get from Upham to the river, Pat? I’m new to this country.”