But the sun did not leave him in wonder much longer. Hitherto, the whole display had been but a dazzling effect of mirage, and when the real orb rose with floods of light, the human eye could no longer gaze at it with impunity. Then the rosy heavens suddenly brightened into gold, and the line of the horizon appeared to melt into the sky.
At the first flash of sunlight the whole sleeping camp stirred. The forest of horns of fifteen hundred cattle moved. The old bull shook the bell at his neck, and at its sound uprose the puszta chorus. One thousand five hundred cattle began to low.
"Splendid! Good Lord," exclaimed the painter ecstatically. "This is a Wagner chorus! Oboes, hunting horns, kettledrums! What an overture! What a scene! It is a finale from the Götterdämmerung!"
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sajgató. "But now they are going to the well. Every cow is calling her calf, that is why they are lowing."
Three herdsmen ran to the well—the beam of which testified to the skill of the carpenter—and setting the three buckets in motion, emptied the water into the large drinking trough—fatiguing work which has to be done three times a day.
"Would it not be simpler to use some mechanism worked by horse-power?" inquired the German gentleman of the overseer.
"We have such a machine," he replied, "but the cowboy would rather wear out his own hands than frighten his horse with it."
Meanwhile a fourth cowboy had been occupied in picking out those cows which belonged to Mr. Sajgató, and in removing their calves, which he drove into the corral, the mothers following them meekly into the fenced enclosure.
"These are mine," said Mr. Sajgató.
"But how can the herdsman tell among a thousand cattle which belong to Mr. Sajgató?" asked the manager of the stables. "How do you know one from the other?"