ow. Windy Bill arose and looked out the door.

"Boys," said he, returning. "She's cleared off. We can get back to the
ranch tomorrow."

[2] "Oilers"--Greasers--Mexicans.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE DRIVE

A cry awakened me. It was still deep night. The moon sailed overhead,
the stars shone unwavering like candles, and a chill breeze wandered in
from the open spaces of the desert. I raised myself on my elbow,
throwing aside the blankets and the canvas tarpaulin. Forty other
indistinct, formless bundles on the ground all about me were sluggishly
astir. Four figures passed and repassed between me and a red fire. I
knew them for the two cooks and the horse wranglers. One of the latter
was grumbling.

"Didn't git in till moon-up last night," he growled. "Might as well
trade my bed for a lantern and be done with it."

Even as I stretched my arms and shivered a little, the two wranglers
threw down their tin plates with a clatter, mounted horses and rode
away in the direction of the thousand acres or so known as the pasture.

I pulled on my clothes hastily, buckled in my buckskin shirt, and dove
for the fire. A dozen others were before me. It was bitterly cold.
In the east the sky had paled the least bit in the world, but the moon
and stars shone on bravely and undiminished. A band of coyotes was
shrieking desperate blasphemies against the new day, and the stray
herd, awakening, was beginning to bawl and bellow.

Two crater-like dutch ovens, filled with pieces of fried beef, stood
near the fire; two galvanised water buckets, brimming with soda
biscuits, flanked them; two tremendous coffee pots stood guard at
either end. We picked us each a tin cup and a tin plate from the box
at the rear of the chuck wagon; helped ourselves from a dutch oven, a
pail, and a coffee pot, and squatted on our heels as close to the fire
as possible. Men who came too late borrowed the shovel, scooped up
some coals, and so started little fires of their own about which new
groups formed.

While we ate, the eastern sky lightened. The mountains under the dawn
looked like silhouettes cut from slate-coloured paper; those in the
west showed faintly luminous. Objects about us became dimly visible.
We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of the ranch houses, and
the corrals. The cowboys arose one by one, dropped their plates into
the dishpan, and began to hunt out their ropes. Everything was obscure
and mysterious in the