id. He said, 'Cut it, spite o' hell an' high
water,' and I always obey orders."

They wound down the hillside until they came to the stream, the horses
quickening their pace with the smell of water in their eager nostrils.
It was a good ford, broad and shallow, with the typical boulder bottom
of the mountain stream. The horses crowded into it, drinking greedily
with a sort of droning noise caused by the bits in their mouths. When
they had satisfied their thirst they raised their heads, stretched their
noses far out and champed wide-mouthed upon their bits.

After a pause in the stream they drew out on the farther bank, where
were open spaces among cottonwood trees, and Transley indicated that
this would be their camping ground. Already smoke was issuing from the
chuck wagon, and in a few minutes the men's sleeping tent and the two
stable tents were flashing back the afternoon sun. They carried no
eating tent; instead of that an eating wagon was backed up against the
chuck wagon, and the men were served in it. They had not paused for a
midday meal; the cook had provided sandwiches of bread and roast beef
to dull the edge of their appetite, and now all were keen to fall to as
soon as the welcome clanging of the plow-colter which hung from the end
of the chuck wagon should give the signal.

Presently this clanging filled the evening air with sweet music, and the
men filed with long, slouchy tread into the eating wagon. The table ran
down the centre, with bench seats at either side. The cook, properly
gauging the men's appetites, had not taken time to prepare meat and
potatoes, but on the table were ample basins of graniteware filled with
beans and bread and stewed prunes and canned tomatoes, pitchers of syrup
and condensed milk, tins with marmalade and jam, and plates with butter
sadly suffering from the summer heat. The cook filled their granite cups
with hot tea from a granite pitcher, and when the cups were empty filled
them again and again. And when the tables were partly cleared he brought
out deep pies filled with raisins and with evaporated apples and a
thick cake from which the men cut hunks as generous as their appetite
suggested. Transley had learned, what women are said to have learned
long ago, that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and the
cook had carte blanche. Not a man who ate at Transley's table but would
have spilt his blood for the boss or for the honor of the gang.

The meal was neari