"Driving stock is by no means so easy as it looks," he grumbled, when they had climbed the opposite ascent, leading their horses. "The way these beasts jump about among the bushes confuses you; I'd have sworn there were forty of them in the ravine."
"I see only nine now," George said pointedly.
Edgar looked back into the hollow.
"There are three of the brutes slipping away upstream as fast as they can go! You're smarter at the thing than I am—hadn't you better go after them?"
"I expect I'll be needed to keep this bunch together," George rejoined.
Edgar strode away, but it was half an hour later when he came back, hot and angry, with the cattle crashing through the brush in front of him. Then the reunited herd set off at a smart pace across the plain.
"They seem fond of an evening gallop," Edgar remarked. "Anyhow, they're going the right way, which strikes me as something to be thankful for."
They rode on, and it was getting dark when they checked the herd near a straggling poplar bluff. The grass was good, the beasts began to feed quietly, and after picketing their horses the men lay down on their blankets. It was growing cooler, a vivid band of green still flickered along the prairie's rim, and the deep silence was intensified by the soft sound the cattle made cropping the dew-damped herbage.
"I wonder if they go to sleep," mused Edgar. "I'm beginning to think this kind of thing must be rather fine when one gets used to it. It's a glorious night."
By and by he drew his blanket round him and sank into slumber; but for a while George, who had paid a high price for a Hereford bull, lay awake, thinking and calculating. It would cost a good deal more than he had anticipated to work the farm; Sylvia had no funds that could be drawn upon, and his means were not large. Economy and good management would be needed, but he was determined to make a success of his undertaking. At last, seeing that the herd showed no signs of moving, he went to sleep.