e round-up
captain the fact that I had skipped one animal, he merely laughed.

"Why, kid," said he, "you can't do nothin' with a cow that gets on the
prod that away 'thout you ropes her; and what could you do with her out
there if you DID rope her?"

So I learned one thing more about cows.

After the steer cut had been finished, the men representing the
neighbouring ranges looked through the herd for strays of their brands.
These were thrown into the stray-herd, which had been brought up from
the bottom lands to receive the new accessions. Work was pushed
rapidly, as the afternoon was nearly gone.

In fact, so absorbed were we that until it was almost upon us we did
not notice a heavy thunder-shower that arose in the region of the
Dragoon Mountains, and swept rapidly across the zenith. Before we knew
it the rain had begun. In ten seconds it had increased to a deluge,
and in twenty we were all to leeward of the herd striving desperately
to stop the drift of the cattle down wind.

We did everything in our power to stop them, but in vain. Slickers
waved, quirts slapped against leather, six-shooters flashed, but still
the cattle, heads lowered, advanced with slow and sullen persistence
that would not be stemmed. If we held our ground, they divided around
us. Step by step we were forced to give way--the thin line of
nervously plunging horses sprayed before the dense mass of the cattle.

"No, they won't stampede," shouted Charley to my question. "There's
cows and calves in them. If they was just steers or grown critters,
they might."

The sensations of those few moments were very vivid--the blinding beat
of the storm in my face, the unbroken front of horned heads bearing
down on me, resistless as fate, the long slant of rain with the sun
shining in the distance beyond it.

Abruptly the downpour ceased. We shook our hats free of water, and
drove the herd back to the cutting grounds again.

But now the surface of the ground was slippery, and the rapid
manoeuvring of horses had become a matter precarious in the extreme.
Time and again the ponies fairly sat on their haunches and slid when
negotiating a sudden stop, while quick turns meant the rapid
scramblings that only a cow-horse could accomplish. Nevertheless the
work went forward unchecked. The men of the other outfits cut their
cattle into the stray-herd. The latter was by now of considerable
size, for this was the third week of the round-up.

Finally