COWBOYS AT THE ROUND-UP.
The riders of the Double Bar J Ranch bunching up their cattle in the National Forest.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
CHAPTER V
A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT
"Bob-Cat was telling me," said Wilbur, as with the Ranger he rode through the arid and silvered grayness of the Mohave desert and reached the foothill country, "that before you entered the Service you were pretty well known as a hunter."
"Wa'al, son," the mountaineer replied, "I reckon I've done some kind o' huntin' for fifty years on end. But there's not much huntin' in this part o' the country."
"No," said Wilbur, looking around him, "I guess there isn't."
The road ran along a little gully with a small stream shaded by scrub oak, but arising from this and similar gullies, in great rounded bosses, heaved the barren slopes, the grass already turning yellow and too sparse to cloak the red earth below.