“A herd? Cattle, do you mean?” exclaimed Dig.
“Yes.”
“You don’t mean to say this is a cattle trail?” demanded the other boy, drawing the black horse to a stop at the edge of a wide track in the sodded land, and gazing at it wonderingly.
“That’s what it is. More than twice as wide as the street we live in, Dig. See how the cattle’s sharp hoofs have cut it up? The herd we were with was a great sight. The column was a mile long, the cattle trotting along as they pleased, and seemingly of their own accord.”
“But didn’t the cowpunchers hurry ’em on, and crack their quirts and shoot guns to hurry them and all that?”
“Of course not,” said Chet, with disgust. “How much fat would there be left on a steer, do you suppose, if they were treated that way on the trail? I didn’t see a man carrying a whip, and we rode with them nearly a week.
“Everything was quiet; nobody shouted; nobody seemed to bother the cattle at all.”
“But there must have been lots of cowpunchers on hand, so that if the cattle stampeded—” Dig urged.
“There weren’t but eleven men with that herd,” Chet told him. “I tried to find out all about the herd and how they handled them. You see, the men in the lead were called ‘point men,’ those riding along the sides of the herd were the ‘swing men’ and the one who brought up the rear was the ‘drag man.’
“In addition, there was the cook, who drove the chuck wagon, and the horse wrangler, who had charge of the remuda of a hundred and fifty ponies. ‘Remuda’ means relay, you know.”