rt?" we inquired.

Wes looked on us with pity.

"This is plumb arctic," said he.

Near noon we came to a little cattle ranch situated in a flat
surrounded by red dikes and buttes after the manner of Arizona. Here
we unpacked, early as it was, for through the dry countries one has to
apportion his day's journeys by the water to be had. If we went
farther to-day, then to-morrow night would find us in a dry camp.

The horses scampered down the flat to search out alfilaria. We roosted
under a slanting shed,--where were stock saddles, silver-mounted bits
and spurs, rawhide riatas, branding-irons, and all the lumber of the
cattle business,--and hung out our tongues and gasped for breath and
earnestly desired the sun to go down or a breeze to come up. The
breeze shortly did so. It was a hot breeze, and availed merely to
cover us with dust, to swirl the stable-yard into our faces. Great
swarms of flies buzzed and lit and stung. Wes, disgusted, went over to
where a solitary cowpuncher was engaged in shoeing a horse. Shortly we
saw Wes pressed into service to hold the horse's hoof. He raised a
pathetic face to us, the big round drops chasing each other down it as
fast as rain. We grinned and felt better.

The fierce perpendicular rays of the sun beat down. The air under the
shed grew stuffier and more oppressive, but it was the only patch of
shade in all that pink and red furnace of a little valley. The
Tenderfoot discovered a pair of horse-clippers, and, becoming slightly
foolish with the heat, insisted on our barbering his head. We told him
it was cooler with hair than without; and that the flies and sun would
be offered thus a beautiful opportunity, but without avail. So we
clipped him,--leaving, however, a beautiful long scalp-lock in the
middle of his crown. He looked like High-low-kickapoo-waterpot, chief
of the Wam-wams. After a while he discovered it, and was unhappy.

Shortly the riders began to come in, jingling up to the shed, with a
rattle of spurs and bit-chains. There they unsaddled their horses,
after which, with great unanimity, they soused their heads in the
horse-trough. The chief, a six-footer, wearing beautifully decorated
gauntlets and a pair of white buckskin chaps, went so far as to say it
was a little warm for the time of year. In the freshness of evening,
when frazzled nerves had regained their steadiness, he returned to
smoke and yarn with us and tell us of the peculiarities of the