"Yes, a thing like that gives you an appetite," remarked Dick.
"As if you ever needed any stimulant!" laughed Nort. "I never saw the time yet when you had to be offered an inducement to sit up to grub!"
"You either!" retorted the stout lad. "But, speaking of grub, when do we eat, Bud?"
"Might as well make it right soon," was the answer. "Now that we have the steers quieted they'll be glad enough to take it easy. I planned to water 'em at the next stopping place, and that will give us a chance to see what Buck Tooth put up for us."
"Stay there all night; will we?" asked Nort.
"Might as well," assented his cousin. "No use running all the fat off our stock. We want 'em to weigh as heavy as possible."
This was good business tact on the part of the boy ranchers. For cattle are generally sold by weight, either "on the hoof," which means alive and as they stand in the stock yards, or by weight after being slaughtered. In the case of ranchers "on the hoof" is generally understood.
And driving a bunch of steers at too great a speed from the ranch to the railroad would make them thin, "running off their fat," so to speak, thus losing all the advantages of the rich fodder to which they had had access. And when it is considered that it is not at all difficult to cause a steer to lose from ten to fifteen pounds by means of poor driving, and when to this statement is added the fact that this loss is multiplied in hundreds of steers, Bud's state of mind can easily be imagined.
"Yes, we'll get 'em quieted down, and take it easy ourselves," suggested the Western lad. And, a little later when some of the steers broke into a run, Nort exclaimed:
"Are they stampeding again?"