"Sure not. That's why he's worrying. He's got things too easy, the rascal. If he had some real troubles, probably he wouldn't fret at all."
Winter dragged along—a winter of blustering winds, of abrupt, dead calms and terrible cold. The cold did not last, however. Some snow fell in the hills, and under a bright sun ran down in rills to the river. Later, the rains held off and the grass shriveled. The country turned a pale brown.
We never look for the first rains to wash the land until July—for some unexplained reason everybody sets the date at July Fourth. But in early June numberless clouds massed in tumbled glory above the mountains and the rain drove down in sheets. Three days later the country showed green and pure, the trees put forth new leaves and the ocatilla flared turkey-red on the ridges.
"The cattle are looking fine," Lafe reported. "Their hides are loose. We've had a good calf crop. It'll run to seventy per cent, Horne. And there ain't no worms, or likely will be."
"Start the roundup next week," said Horne.
Accordingly, the Anvil outfit gathered its horses, packed its chuckwagon with food and bedding, and set out for Zacaton Bottom, there to pitch the first camp. They would not reach the mountain pastures, where the wild steers roamed, until late in the autumn.
The horses were on edge from their winter's freedom. One in every three were broncos just broken. What the Anvil buster facetiously called a broken horse was one that had had three saddles. After those, he was turned into the remuda—not bridle-wise, full of fight and vicious from memory of what the buster had imposed on him. As a result, we had five or six contests of endurance between riders and mounts each morning. One of the boys was thrown and had his collar bone broken.
As boss, Johnson had the privilege of topping the remuda for his string—that is to say, he had first choice of all horses. Yet it was generally a point of honor not to appropriate all the gentle ones; also, not to assign all the bad ones to one particular hand; and it is always a point of honor to retain those selected, and ride them, whatever characteristics they may develop afterwards.
In Lafe's mount was a big J A sorrel that had roved the fastnesses of Paloduro in Texas. The buster had christened him Casey Jones, after the celebrated engineer, because of the desperate quality of his courage. Now, by reason of Lafe's recently developed nervousness concerning himself, I could not repress my impatience for the day to arrive for Casey Jones' saddling—the horses are worked in rotation and, being entirely grass-fed, each can only be used about once in three days.
In a chill dawn the roper called to Johnson: "Want Casey Jones?"