The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years old, and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra head added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the trail, as they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being bedded down for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the round-up to have a necessary word with the “Circle-Star” foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired, with a few expletives, “how long he had been a cow-man, in good and regular standing?”
“As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he’s had an interest in the ‘XXX’ since—since—”
“He drove Rodney’s sheep over the cliff?”
“Ain’t you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It usually goes by a more business-like name, but—” he shrugged his shoulders—“it’s up to the ‘XXX.’ We wouldn’t have him help to pull bogged cattle out of a creek.”
The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually being pressed forward on the trail, a huge pawn, ignorant of its own strength, manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing, like the tuning of a thousand bass-fiddles, shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to feed the multitude.
“Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I’d want to put tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I’m expecting, doubtless I’ll meet some of you again with your personality somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions.”
The foreman of the “Circle-Star” waved his hand after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail’s-pace. The great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little force of a handful of men and a few horses.
After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm’s-length, which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common variety of billet-doux. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, “It’s from her.”
“Indeed,” said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who “her” could be. “Let me congratulate you.”
“Yes, sir,” and there was conviction in the cow-puncher’s tone; “it’s from old man Kinson’s girl, up to the Basin, and the parson’s goin’ to give us the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o’ helling it all over creation.” He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to speak with a certain authority. “Is it that, or is it that we’re getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?”