enced. The cattle were uniform in
size, and the stamping of the figure '4' over the holding "Lazy L"
of Las Palomas, moved like clockwork. With a daybreak start and an
abundance of help the last animal was ironed up before sundown. As a
favor to Nancrede's outfit, their camp being nearly five miles distant,
we held them the first night after branding.

No sooner had the trail foreman accepted our three-year-olds than he and
Glen Gallup set out for the McLeod ranch on the San Miguel. The day our
branding was finished, the two returned near midnight, reported the San
Miguel cattle accepted and due the next evening at Las Palomas. By dawn
Nancrede and myself started for Santa Maria, the former being deficient
in Spanish, the only weak point, if it was one, in his make-up as a
cowman. We were slightly disappointed in not finding the cattle ready to
pass upon at Santa Maria. That ranch was to deliver seven hundred, and
on our arrival they had not even that number under herd. Don Mateo, an
easy-going ranchero, could not understand the necessity of such haste.
What did it matter if the cattle were delivered on the twenty-fifth or
twenty-seventh? But I explained as delicately as I could that this was
a trail man, whose vocabulary did not contain _manana_. In interpreting
for Nancrede, I learned something of the trail myself: that a herd
should start with the grass and move with it, keeping the freshness of
spring, day after day and week after week, as they trailed northward.
The trail foreman assured Don Mateo that had his employers known that
this was to be such an early spring, the herd would have started a week
sooner.

By impressing on the ranchero the importance of not delaying this trail
man, we got him to inject a little action into his corporal. We asked
Don Mateo for horses and, joining his outfit, made three rodeos that
afternoon, turning into the cattle under herd nearly two hundred and
fifty head by dark that evening. Nancrede spent a restless night, and at
dawn, as the cattle were leaving the bed ground, he and I got an easy
count on them and culled them down to the required number before
breakfasting. We had some little trouble explaining to Don Mateo the
necessity of giving the bill of sale to my employer, who, in turn, would
reconvey the stock to the contractors. Once the matter was made clear,
the accepted cattle were started for Las Palomas. When we overtook them
an hour afterward, I instructed the corporal,