I've sent
the wagons on to Red Willow; we'll try that next. Push 'em along all yuh
can, while I go on ahead and see."

With tin-cans, slickers, and much vituperation, they forced the herd up
the coulee side and strung them out again on trail. The line-backed
cow walked and walked in the lead before Pink's querulous gaze, and the
others plodded listlessly after. The gray dust-cloud formed anew over
their slowmoving backs, and the cowboys humped over in their saddles
and rode and rode, with the hot sun beating aslant in their dirt-grimed
faces, and with the wind blowing and blowing.

If this had been the first herd to make that dreary trip, things would
not have been quite so disheartening. But it was the third. Seven
thousand lean kine had passed that way before them, eating the scant
grass growth and drinking what water they could find among those barren,
sun-baked coulees.

The Cross L boys, on this third trip, were become a jaded lot of
hollow-eyed men, whose nerves were rasped raw with long hours and longer
days in the saddle. Pink's cheeks no longer made his name appropriate,
and he was not the only one who grew fretful over small things. Rowdy
had been heard, more than once lately, to anathematize viciously the
prairie-dogs for standing on their tails and chipchip-chipping at them
as they went by. And though the Silent One did not swear, he carried
rocks in his pockets, and threw them with venomous precision at every
"dog" that showed his impertinent nose out of a burrow within range. For
Pink, he vented his spleen on the line-backed cow.

So they walked and walked and walked.

The cattle balked at another hill, and all the tincans and slickers in
the crowd could scarcely move them. The wind dropped with the sun, and
the clouds glowed gorgeously above them, getting scant notice, except
that they told eloquently of the coming night; and there were yet
miles--long, rough, heartbreaking miles--to put behind them before
they could hope for the things their tired bodies craved: supper and
dreamless sleep.

When the last of the herd had sidled, under protest, down the long hill
to the flat, dusk was pushing the horizon closer upon them, mile by
mile. When they crawled sinuously out upon the welcome level, the hill
loomed ghostly and black behind them. A mile out, Wooden Shoes rode out
of the gloom and met the point. He turned and rode beside Pink.

"Yuh'll have t' swing 'em north," he greeted.

"Red Willow's d