om his tired eyes.
Of a truth, Reeve-Howard would have stared mightily at sight of him.

Once Park, passing by, smiled down upon him grimly. "Here's where yuh
get the real thing in local color," he taunted, but Thurston was
too busy to answer. The stress of living had dimmed his eye for the
picturesque.

That night, one Philip Thurston slept as sleeps the dead. But he awoke
with the others and thanked the Lord there were no more cattle to unload
and brand.

When he went out on day-herd that afternoon he fancied that he was
getting into the midst of things and taking his place with the veterans.
He would have been filled with resentment had he suspected the truth:
that Park carefully eased those first days of his novitiate. That was
why none of the night-guarding fell to him until they had left Billings
many miles behind them.

CHAPTER V. THE STORM

The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on the
middle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two. The outfit had
camped near the head of a long, shallow basin that had a creek running
through; down the winding banks of it lay the white-tented camps of
seven other trail-herds, the cattle making great brown blotches against
the green at sundown. Thurston hoped they would all be there in the
morning when the sun came up, so that he could get a picture.

"Aw, they'll be miles away by then," Bob assured him unfeelingly. "By
the signs, you can take snap-shots by lightning in another hour. Got
your slicker, Bud?"

Thurston said he hadn't, and Bob shook his head prophetically. "You'll
sure wish yuh had it before yuh hit camp again; when yuh get wise,
you'll ride with your slicker behind the cantle, rain or shine. They'll
need singing to, to-night."

Thurston prudently kept silent, since he knew nothing whatever about it,
and Bob gave him minute directions about riding his rounds, and how to
turn a stray animal back into the herd without disturbing the others.

The man they relieved met them silently and rode away to camp. Off
to the right an animal coughed, and a black shape moved out from the
shadows.

Bob swung towards it, and the shape melted again into the splotch of
shade which was the sleeping herd. He motioned to the left. "Yuh can go
that way; and yuh want to sing something, or whistle, so they'll know
what yuh are." His tone was subdued, as it had not been before. He
seemed to drift away into the darkness, and soon his voice rose, a