. "I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my ears
day and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves."

"It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse," Gene
told him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bit
through even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in the
fireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. "There's
going to be the biggest loss this range has ever known."

"It's the owners' fault," snapped Thurston, whose nerves were in
that irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Even
argument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be a
relief. "It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't they
take care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in the
house and watch them starve through the winter?"

"What if yuh owned more than yuh could feed? It'd be a case uh have-to
then. There's fifty thousand Lazy Eight cattle walking the range
somewhere today. How the dickens is old Hank going to feed them fifty
thousand? or five thousand? It takes every spear uh hay he's got to feed
his calves."

"He could buy hay," Thurston persisted.

"Buy hay for fifty thousand cattle? Where would he get it? Say, Bud, I
guess yuh don't realize that's some cattle. All ails you is, yuh don't
savvy the size uh the thing. I'll bet yuh there won't be less than three
hundred thousand head cross this river before spring."

"Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself."

"I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cow
States. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runs
the range, you're plumb foolish."

"Anyway, it's a damnable pity!" Thurston asserted petulantly.

"Sure it is. The grass is there, but it's under fourteen inches uh snow
right now, and more coming; they say it's twelve feet deep up in the
mountains. You'll see some great old times in the spring, Bud, if yuh
stay. You will, won't yuh?"

Thurston laughed shortly. "I suppose it's safe to say I will," he
answered. "I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It will
probably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, but
I won't."

"You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last spring
wasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives till
spring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll be
scattered clean down to the Y