ion would
vent itself in mere words.

Therefore, when Weary told him to get the stragglers back through the
fence and up on the level, he stopped only long enough for a good look
at their faces. After that he called his dogs and crawled through the
fence.

It really did not require the entire Family to force those sheep south
that morning. But Weary's jaw was set, as was his heart, upon a
thorough cleaning of that particular bit of range; and, since he did
not definitely request any man to turn back, and every fellow there
was minded to see the thing to a finish, they straggled out behind the
trailing two thousand--and never had one bunch of sheep so efficient a
convoy.

After the first few miles the way grew rough. Sheep lagged, and the
blatting increased to an uproar. Old ewes and yearlings these were
mostly, and there were few to suffer more than hunger and thirst,
perhaps. So Weary was merciless, and drove them forward without a stop
until the first jumble of hills and deep-worn gullies held them back
from easy traveling.

But the Happy Family had not ridden those breaks for cattle, all these
years, to be hindered by rough going. Weary, when the band stopped and
huddled, blatting incessantly against a sheer wall of sandstone and
gravel, got the herders together and told them what he wanted.

"You take 'em down that slope till you come to the second little coulee.
Don't go up the first one--that's a blind pocket. In the second coulee,
up a mile or so, there's a spring creek. You can hold 'em there on water
for half an hour. That's more than any of yuh deserve. Haze 'em down
there."

The herders did not know it, but that second coulee was the rude gateway
to an intricate system of high ridges and winding waterways that would
later be dry as a bleached bone--the real beginning of the bad lands
which border the Missouri river for long, terrible miles. Down there,
it is possible for two men to reach places where they may converse quite
easily across a chasm, and yet be compelled to ride fifteen or twenty
miles, perhaps, in order to shake hands. Yet, even in that scrap-heap of
Nature there are ways of passing deep into the heart of the upheaval.

The Happy Family knew those ways as they knew the most complicated
figures of the quadrilles they danced so lightfootedly with the girls of
the Bear Paw country. When they forced the sheep and their herders out
of the coulee Weary had indicated he sent Irish and Pink ahe