, the work
simplified. Once a cow caught sight of this new band, she generally
made directly for it, head and tail up. After the first short struggle
to force her from the herd, all I had to do was to start her in the
proper direction and keep her at it until her decision was fixed. If
she was too soon left to her own devices, however, she was likely to
return. An old cowman knows to a second just the proper moment to
abandon her.

Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts a cow succeeded in circling us
and plunging into the main herd. The temptation was then strong to
plunge in also, and to drive her out by main force; but the temptation
had to be resisted. A dash into the thick of it might break the whole
band. At once, of his own accord, Little G dropped to his fast,
shuffling walk, and again we addressed ourselves to the task of pushing
her gently to the edge.

This was all comparatively simple--almost any pony is fast enough for
the calf cut--but now Homer gave orders for the steer cut to begin, and
steers are rapid and resourceful and full of natural cussedness.
Little G and I were relieved by Windy Bill, and betook ourselves to the
outside of the herd.

Here we had leisure to observe the effects that up to this moment we
had ourselves been producing. The herd, restless by reason of the
horsemen threading it, shifted, gave ground, expanded, and contracted,
so that its shape and size were always changing in the constant area
guarded by the sentinel cowboys. Dust arose from these movements,
clouds of it, to eddy and swirl, thicken and dissipate in the currents
of air. Now it concealed all but the nearest dimly-outlined animals;
again it parted in rifts through which mistily we discerned the riders
moving in and out of the fog; again it lifted high and thin, so that we
saw in clarity the whole herd and the outriders and the mesas far away.
As the afternoon waned, long shafts of sun slanted through this dust.
It played on men and beasts magically, expanding them to the dimensions
of strange genii, appearing and effacing themselves in the billows of
vapour from some enchanted bottle.

We on the outside found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us
by the cooler hours. The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps
somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient. We rode
continually back and forth, turning the slow movement in on itself.
Occasionally some particularly enterprising cow would