Throughout the following day various wagons turned aside to the right or left, branching away toward some far spot allotted to them, there to begin the first actual work. In the late afternoon the Half Diamond H wagon made its stand on a creek that flowed to the Cimarron from the low watershed between that stream and the North Fork of the Canadian. The cook’s summons brought the men tumbling from their bed rolls an hour before dawn. The night hawk hazed the remuda into a corral fashioned by a single rope stretched between stakes sledged solidly into the sod, and after breakfasting the men entered in pairs, each to rope a circle horse of his own particular string. In the first light of day Younger led off up a ridge to the main divide flanking the creek to the left and turned upstream along it. Other reps had joined the wagon and there were now nearly twenty riders following where he led. At the head of each draw he detailed one or two men to work it. When half of the crew had been assigned to cover certain stretches Younger dropped again to the bottoms, mounted to the opposite divide and moved downstream in a similar fashion until even with the wagon, working the last draw himself.
The riders combed the scrub-oak side hills and the gulches, shoving all stock before them to the bottoms and heading them upstream. The first riders to finish their details were stationed across the valley to halt the cows brought in by others. The chuck wagon had lumbered on up the creek to the point from which the next circle would be thrown. The night hawk had gone off duty with sunrise but the wrangler held the remuda in a rope corral. While a part of the men held the herd the others repaired to this enclosure and caught fresh horses, those who were to engage in the next gathering swing putting their ropes on circle mounts, while those detailed to bring up the day herd caught trained cow horses belonging to their individual strings.
In a breeding-ranch country the herd would have been worked on the spot, calves roped and ironed with the brand worn by their mothers, and only the beef steers cut into a day herd, the she-stuff and all stock younger than two-year-olds being allowed to scatter once more on the range. But there were no calves to brand, no she-stock on the range, for of late the cowmen of the Strip had come to follow one set rule in accord with the transition of the cow business, forming an intermediate link between the old-time cattle kings of the open range and the modern feeders of the corn belt. For beef raising, instead of a one-outfit business from start to finish, had come to be a business of progression induced by the necessities of later-day conditions. Big breeding ranches were now mainly confined to the vast wastes of Texas and the Southwest and to similar stretches in the ranges of the Northwest.
The breeding ranches of Texas and New Mexico now gathered their steers as two-year-olds and sold them to the intermediate beef-brands operating in the Strip, the short-grass plains of Western Kansas and the Sandhill country of Nebraska. Here they were ranged on grass till they had turned four-year-olds, then resold to the feeders of Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, who corn-fed and fattened and finished them for market. Except for one breeding ranch confined to a great fenced-in pasture, there was only beef stuff in the whole expanse of the Strip, which rendered the round-up a comparatively simple affair. This last event in particular was simplified by the orders which had just gone forth from governmental sources, and every head of stock gathered in each circle was held in the day herd.
The rope corral was dismantled, ropes and stakes loaded on the bed wagon which promptly headed up country, trailed by the wrangler with the remuda, and Carver led all the hands except those detailed with the day herd up the bottoms toward the new stand of the cook wagon. It was but ten o’clock when they dropped from their horses and fell ravenously upon a hot meal which the cook had already prepared, for while the cowhand’s day begins an hour before dawn his nooning comes at ten and his knock-off time is seldom later than five P. M.
The second circle of the day was completed in the late afternoon. The hands feasted to repletion and lolled about for an hour, buzzing angrily over a new rumor which had just reached camp. The men spread their bed rolls on the ground and retired with the setting sun.
Carver dropped instantly asleep but contrary to his usual custom he waked within an hour and sleep would not come to him as he tossed restlessly in his blankets. The turmoil of the round-up, the hoarse bawls emanating from the throats of five hundred steers, the shrill yelps of riders, the stifling dust of daytime activities; all these had been superseded by the night sounds of the cow camp in the open. A cool breeze stole across the range which now seemed mysteriously hushed. Occasionally some night horse on picket or tied to the stake ropes shifted uneasily and stamped a restless foot. The night hawk held the cavayado on good grass somewhere down the bottoms and his voice drifted faintly to Carver as he sang to while away the lonely hours. The night guards on duty with the herd were likewise singing to soothe their charges on the bed ground a few hundred yards above the wagon, and fragmentary snatches of their melodies floated down to Carver’s ears as he blinked sleeplessly up at the stars. He remained awake till the hour came to stand his turn on second guard and he rolled out, mounted his night horse and rode with several others to relieve the weary riders who had stood the first shift of the night after a fourteen-hour day in the saddle.
As Carver circled the bed ground his thoughts were still concerned with the text of the rumor so recently set afloat. It was said that not only cows, but men would be ordered from the unowned lands; that every foot of fence must be removed from the range and brand owners forced to abandon home ranches. Bart Lassiter joined him.
“Well, what do you think of our latest bit of news?” he asked. “Think they’ll go through with it?”
“It don’t seem reasonable that they’d put over any such drastic measure,” Carver said. “They might. It will be hard on the old man if they do.”