outdoor breakfast ravenously, for both were
enjoying their morning ride. It was cold, but they wore heavy sweaters
and corduroy riding skirts and besides, the swift ride had sent the warm
blood tingling through them. Jack was in brown and Olive in green, the
color Jack liked best for her. The sun had just risen and there was a
faint rose glow over the bare prairies, and in the distance the girls
spied a few coyotes racing along over the hard ground in search of their
breakfast, but for miles and miles there was no sign of human life.

Finally the girls rode up to a pair of tents set up within no great
distance of the plain chosen for the round-up. There was a fire near one
of them, but the girls saw no people about and decided that they must
have been used by the cowboys for their sleeping quarters at night.

Olive brought her pony closer to Jack's.

"Don't be nervous, Olive," said Jack reassuringly. "I expect the
round-up is a pretty wild business, but we won't go near enough to get
into trouble and you must be sure to stay close to me. I shall try to
see some one to ask about our cattle and then we will start right back
home. We will be sure to be at Rainbow Lodge by night."

Away off in the distance, the girls soon saw a great swirling cloud of
grey dust, rising over the yellow plain. They could distinguish an
enormous mass of moving objects and hear a far hollow roaring and
bellowing of men and animals. To the left, across a diagonal trail,
Jack saw a dark line of wagons at some distance from the round-up. She
knew they were the mess-wagons and carriages of the ranchmen, who came
over to superintend the branding of their cattle. If the ranchmen
happened to live near the scene of the round-up their wives and families
sometimes drove over to spend a few hours, but the women were careful
not to go near the frightened animals and returned home before night.

The two girls moved slowly along this trail.

Jack's eyes were dancing and her cheeks were glowing with excitement.
She dearly loved this typical western scene and its noise and savagery
did not frighten her. It was a part of the business of the cattlemen to
which she had always been accustomed. She was sorry of course that the
poor animals had to be burned with the brands of their owners, but since
the cattle ranged together through vast tracts of land, she knew of no
other way by which one ranchman could distinguish his cattle from
another's. Jack had been c