"Damfino," replied the other; "reckon it's just some cranky notion these Greasers got; maybeso they likes your sassiety an' hates to part with you, but, anyhow, that's the law all right, all right, an' if you dies here, you stays here, for five years, if no longer."
"Say, Jim," the kid's voice was full of awe; "My old mammy's up yonder in Trinidad, an' by hooky, if I was to die down here an' she couldn't git hold of me to bury me up there where she laid the old man an' my sister, she's like to go plum loco, fer sure."
"Well, you better make your plans to die on 'tother side the line or else so close to it that somebody can haze you across without any of them there Rurales gittin' on to your game," was Jim's reply, as he returned from chasing a steer back into the herd. "So far as I'm concerned," he continued, "I don't reckon it makes much difference where I'm stuck away, for I'm a drifter an' ain't got no kin that I knows of, an' I guess when a feller's dead he kin hear ole Gabe blow his horn on this side the Rio Grande jist as easy as on 'tother."
The next morning the sun was just peeping over the sand hills away to the east when Uncle John, who had been down along the river since the first gray streak in the sky announced the coming of day, rode into camp as the boys were catching out their horses. As the wagon boss glanced at him, he nodded and said, "All right, George, we'll try it this morning; the river has fallen a lot since last night."
"Which means that I turns this here mule loose an' gits me a horse," remarked one of the riders who had just roped a little black saddle mule, "fer a mule ain't no earthly good in water. If they gits their ears wet, they jist lays down on you, an' quits right there."
"On her hand I placed a ring,
When I left her in the spring,
'Way down yonder in the southwest land."
The singer's voice rose above the shouts of the other boys as they pushed the cattle along toward the river.
"An' she said she'd not forget me,
Oh, she'll be there to meet me,
'Way down yonder on the Rio Grande."
"That's right, Kid, sing to 'em. Time you've got through with this here muddy water job she won't know you if she is there to meet you," laughed the horse-wrangler.
As the herd swung down to the river, the horse-wrangler had his entire remuda at the water's edge, and with two men to help him he slowly forced the horses out into the stream, with old Bennie, the crack "cutting horse" of the outfit, in the lead. The old rascal had been used for this work for ten years and well knew that there was a nose bag full of oats waiting for him on the further bank of the river.