over to the home
ranch for a day or two, but Mona was away studying music, so he found no
inducement to remain, and drifted back to the little, sod-roofed cabin
by the river, and to Gene.

The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and never
a chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast.
Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter for
days, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds.
By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When the
wind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushed
reluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene and
Thurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn them
pitilessly back into the teeth of the storm.

They came by hundreds--thin, gaunt from cold and hunger. They came by
thousands, lowing their misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking that
which none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilled
bodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave over
trying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch a
dozen others were straggling out from shore, the timid following
single file behind a leader more venturesome or more desperate than his
fellows.

So the march went on and on: big, Southern-bred steer grappling the
problem of his first Northern winter; thin-flanked cow with shivering,
rough-coated calf trailing at her heels; humpbacked yearling with little
nubs of horns telling that he was lately in his calfhood; red cattle,
spotted cattle, white cattle, black cattle; white-faced Herefords,
Short-horns, scrubs; Texas longhorns--of the sort invariably pictured
in stampedes--still they came drifting out of the cold wilderness and on
into wilderness as cold.

Through the shifting wall of the worst blizzard that season Thurston
watched the weary, fruitless, endless march of the range. "Where do they
all come from?" he exclaimed once when the snow-veil lifted and showed
the river black with cattle.

"Lord! I dunno," Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against the
pity of it. "I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in the
Cypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the whole
darned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run.
I'm looking for reindeer next."

"Something ought to be done," Thurston declared uneasily, turning away
from the sight