owed, with a
train of excited steers at her heels. And as the calf was dragged
bellowing across the bridge, it was followed by excited, struggling
steers who never knew whether they were walking on a bridge or on
_terra firma_. The excitement spread through the herd, and they
thickened around the entrance until it was necessary to hold them
back, and only let enough pass to keep the chain unbroken.

They were nearly a half hour in crossing, for it was fully as large a
herd as ours; and when the last animal had crossed, Pete Slaughter
stood up in his stirrups and led the long yell. The sun went down that
day on nobody's wrath, for Jacklin was so tickled that he offered to
kill the fattest beef in his herd if we would stay overnight with him.
All three of the herds were now over, but had not this herd balked on
us the evening before, over nine thousand cattle would have crossed
Slaughter's bridge the day it was built.

It was now late in the evening, and as we had to wait some little time
to get our own horses, we stayed for supper. It was dark before we set
out to overtake the herd, but the trail was plain, and letting our
horses take their own time, we jollied along until after midnight. We
might have missed the camp, but, by the merest chance, Priest sighted
our camp-fire a mile off the trail, though it had burned to embers. On
reaching camp, we changed saddles to our night horses, and, calling
Officer, were ready for our watch. We were expecting the men on guard
to call us any minute, and while Priest was explaining to Officer the
trouble we had had in crossing the Millet herd, I dozed off to sleep
there as I sat by the rekindled embers. In that minute's sleep my mind
wandered in a dream to my home on the San Antonio River, but the next
moment I was aroused to the demands of the hour by The Rebel shaking
me and saying,--"Wake up, Tom, and take a new hold. They're calling us
on guard. If you expect to follow the trail, son, you must learn to do
your sleeping in the winter."

CHAPTER XV

THE BEAVER

After leaving the country tributary to the Solomon River, we crossed a
wide tableland for nearly a hundred miles, and with the exception of
the Kansas Pacific Railroad, without a landmark worthy of a name.
Western Kansas was then classified, worthily too, as belonging to the
Great American Desert, and most of the country for the last five
hundred miles of our course was entitled to a similar description.
Once the