"Then we'd better be off," she suggested. "Since you're the Three Bar foreman it's for you to say when."
"I only preempted that job for ten minutes or so," he explained with evident embarrassment. "You surely didn't think I was trying to boost myself into the foreman's job for keeps?"
"No," she said. "But you're half-owner—and you can handle men. I'm giving you free rein to show what you can do."
Harris straightened in his saddle and motioned to the men.
"Let's go!" he ordered, and headed his horse for the left-hand flank of the valley. They ascended the first slopes, picked a long ridge and followed it to the crest of the low divide between that valley and the next.
Harris increased the pace and they swept up-country along the divide at a steady lope. When traveling or making a long day's ride on a single horse the cowhand saves his mount and travels always at a trail-trot, but with work to be done, three circles to be thrown in a day and with a string of fresh horses for every hand, the paramount issue of the circle is the saving of time rather than the saving of mounts. As they reached the head of the first draw that led back down into the valley Harris waved an arm.
"Carp," he called, and a middle-aged man named Carpenter, abbreviated to Carp, wheeled his horse from the group and headed down the draw.
A half-mile farther on they reached the head of another gulch.
"Hanson!" the new foreman called, and the man who repped for the Halfmoon D dropped out. One man was detailed to work each draw and when some five miles up the divide there were but half the crew left. Harris dropped down a long ridge and crossed the bottoms. Far down the valley the wagon showed through the thin, clear air. The foreman led the way to the opposite divide and doubled back, sending a man down every gulch.
The girl rode with him. Down in the bottoms they could see the riders detailed on the opposite side hazing the cows out of their respective draws and heading them toward the wagon. The first few men left their cows in the flat and veered past them to station themselves near the wagon and block the valley, sitting their horses at hundred-yard intervals across it.