forward like
bullets to turn back into the main herd certain individuals whom the
early morning of the unwearied day had inspired to make a dash for
liberty. The rear was brought up by Jerky Jones, the fourth
cow-puncher, and the four-mule chuck wagon, lost in its own dust.

The sun mounted; the desert went silently through its changes. Wind
devils raised straight, true columns of dust six, eight hundred, even a
thousand feet into the air. The billows of dust from the horses and
men crept and crawled with them like a living creature. Glorious
colour, magnificent distance, astonishing illusion, filled the world.

Senor Johnson rode ahead, looking at these things. The separation from
his wife, brief as it would be, left room in his soul for the
heart-hunger which beauty arouses in men. He loved the charm of the
desert, yet it hurt him.

Behind him the punchers relieved the tedium of the march, each after
his own manner. In an hour the bunch of loose horses lost its
early-morning good spirits and settled down to a steady plodding, that
needed no supervision. Tom Rich led them, now, in silence, his time
fully occupied in rolling Mexican cigarettes with one hand. The other
three dropped back together and exchanged desultory remarks.
Occasionally Jim Lester sang. It was always the same song of uncounted
verses, but Jim had a strange fashion of singing a single verse at a
time. After a long interval he would sing another.

"My Love is a rider
And broncos he breaks,
But he's given up riding
And all for my sake,
For he found him a horse
And it suited him so
That he vowed he'd ne'er ride
Any other bronco!"

he warbled, and then in the same breath:

"Say, boys, did you get onto the pisano-looking shorthorn at Willets
last week?

"Nope."

"He sifted in wearin' one of these hardboiled hats, and carryin' a
brogue thick enough to skate on. Says he wants a job drivin'
team--that he drives a truck plenty back to St. Louis, where he comes
from. Goodrich sets him behind them little pinto cavallos he has.
Say! that son of a gun a driver! He couldn't drive nails in a snow
bank." An expressive free-hand gesture told all there was to tell of
the runaway. "Th' shorthorn landed headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's
horse trough. Charlie fishes him out. 'How the devil, stranger,' says
Charlie, 'did you come to fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the
shorthorn, just cryin' mad, 'I didn't