pson, the origin of whose connection with the "XXX" was rather a
sensitive subject with that outfit, had begun to take his duties as a
cattle-man with grim seriousness; he was untiring in his labors; he spent
long hours in the saddle, he took his turn at night herding, though he was
old for this kind of work. He condemned the sheep-men with foul-mouthed
denunciations, scoffed at their range-rights, said the sheep question
should be dealt with in the business-like manner in which the Indian
question had been settled. He was an advocate of violence--in short, a
swaggering, bombastic wind-bag. He talked much of "his outfit" and "his
men." "What was good enough for them was good enough for him," he would
announce at meal-time, in a snivelling tone, when the food happened to be
particularly bad. He split the temporary outfit, brought together for the
purpose of handling the beef-herd, into factions. He put the "XXX" in
worse repute than it already enjoyed--he was, in fact, the discordant
spirit of the expedition. The men attended to their work sullenly. Discord
was rife. The one thought they shared in common was that of the wages that
would come to them at the end of the drive; of the feverish joy of
"blowing in," in a single night; perchance, of forgetting, in one long,
riotous evening, the monotony, the hardship, the lack of comradery that
made this particular drive one long to be remembered in the mind of every
man who had taken part in it.

Meanwhile the herd trailed its half-mile length to the slaughtering pens
day after day, all unconscious of its power. When the steers had trailed
for about a fortnight, the question of finding sufficient water for them
began to be a serious one. The preceding winter had been unusually mild,
the snow-fall on the mountains averaging less than in the recollection of
the oldest plains-man. Summer had begun early and waxed hot and dry. The
earth began to wrinkle, and cracked into trenches, like gaping mouths,
thirsty for the water that came not. Such streams as had not dried shrank
and crawled among the willows like slimy things, that the herd, thirsty
though it was from the long drives, had to be coaxed to drink from.

Discontent grew. The acting foreman, who was a "XXX" man, and a
comparative stranger to that part of the country, refused to consult with
the "W-square" men in the outfit, who knew every inch of the ground. The
acting foreman thought the Wetmore men looked down on him, "put