I waited while the drove went by, counting the cattle to see that none had been overlooked in the night. The Aberdeen-Angus still held his place in the front, and the big muley bull marched by like a king's governor, keeping his space of clear road at the peril of a Homeric struggle.
I knew every one of the six hundred, and I could have hugged each great black fellow as he trudged past.
Jud and the Cardinal went by in the middle of the long line and passed out of sight behind a turn of the hill below. The giant rode slowly, lolling in his saddle and swinging his big legs free of the stirrups.
Then the lagging rear of the drove trailed up, and the hunchback followed on the Bay Eagle. He was buttoned to the chin in Roy's blue coat and looked for all the world like some shrivelled old marshal of the empire, a hundred days out of Paris, covering the retreat of the imperial army.
El Mahdi stood on the high bank by the roadside, in among the dead blackberry briers, and I sat with the rein under my legs and my hands in my pockets.
The hunchback stopped his horse in the road below me, squared himself in his saddle, and looked up with a great supercilious grin.
"Well," he said, "I'll be damn!"
"What's the trouble?" said I.
"Humph!" he snorted, "are them britches I see on your legs?"
"That's what they call them," said I.