to be driven a
few miles farther and joined with the droves collected by the Fillmore
Company's men and by two or three of his neighbors for the last work
of the spring round-up. In the evening one of the cow-boys was sent to
the ranch house with a message to the foreman, and a little later the
other was seized with a sudden illness from having drunk at an alkali
spring during the day. Mead, Tuttle and Ellhorn then arranged to share
the night in watches of three hours each with the cattle. Mead's began
at midnight. He saddled and mounted his horse and began the monotonous
patrol of the herd.

There were some three hundred steers in the bunch of cattle. They lay,
sleeping quietly, so closely huddled together that there was barely
room for them to move. Occasionally, one lying at the outer edge got
up, stretched himself, nibbled a few bunches of grass, and then lay
down again. Now and then, as one changed his position, a long, blowing
breath, or a satisfied grunt and groan, came out of the darkness. When
Mead started his horse on the slow walk round and round the sleeping
herd the sky was clear. In its violet-blue the stars were blazing big
and bright, and he said to himself that the cattle would sleep quietly
and he would probably have an uneventful watch. He let the horse poke
round the circle at its own pace, while his thoughts wandered back to
his last visit to Las Plumas and hovered about the figure of
Marguerite Delarue as she stood beside her gate and took little Paul
from his hands. With a sudden warming of the heart he saw again her
tall figure in the pink gown, with the rose bloom in her cheeks and
the golden glimmer in her brown hair and the loving mother-look in her
eyes as she smiled at the happy child. But with a sigh and a shake of
the head he checked his thoughts and sent them to the mass-meeting and
the days he had spent in the jail.

Presently it occurred to him that his watch must be nearly over and he
looked up at the Great Dipper, swinging on its north star pivot. Then
he smiled at himself, for it seemed scarcely to have changed position
since he had mounted his horse. "Not an hour yet," was his mental
comment. Clouds were beginning to roll up from the horizon, and he
could hear low mutterings of thunder and among the mountain tops see
occasional flashes of lightning. Soon the sky was heavily overcast,
and the darkness was so dense that it seemed palpable, like an
enveloping, smothering cover, which