"There's your horse," remarked the Captain in a matter-of-course tone.

We rode out the corral gate and directly into the open country. The
animals chafed to be away; and when we loosened the reins, leaped
forward in long bounds. Over the rough country they skimmed like
swallows, their hoofs hardly seeming to touch the ground, the powerful
muscles playing smoothly beneath us like engines. After a mile of this
we pulled up, and set about the serious business of the day.

One after another we oversaw all the major activities of such a ranch;
outside, I mean, of the ranch enclosure proper where were the fowls, the
vegetable gardens, and the like. Here an immense hay rick was being
driven slowly along while two men pitched off the hay to right and left.
After it followed a long line of cattle. This manner of feeding obviated
the crowding that would have taken place had the hay not been thus
scattered. The more aggressive followed close after the rick, snatching
mouthfuls of the hay as it fell. The more peaceful, or subdued, or
philosophical strung out in a long, thin line, eating steadily at one
spot. They got more hay with less trouble, but the other fellows had to
maintain reputations for letting nobody get ahead of _them_!

At another point an exceedingly rackety engine ran a hay press, where
the constituents of one of the enormous house-like haystacks were fed
into a hopper and came out neatly baled. A dozen or so men oversaw the
activities of this noisy and dusty machine.

Down by the northerly cottonwoods two miles away we found other men with
scrapers throwing up the irrigation checks along the predetermined
contour lines. By means of these irregular meandering earthworks the
water, admitted from the ditch to the upper end of the field, would work
its way slowly from level to level instead of running off or making
channels for itself. This job, too, was a dusty one. We could see the
smoke of it rising from a long distance; and the horses and men were
brown with it.

And again we rode softly for miles over greensward through the cattle,
at a gentle fox trot, so as not to disturb them. At several points stood
great blue herons, like sentinels, decorative as a Japanese screen,
absolutely motionless. The Captain explained that they were "fishing"
for gophers; and blessed them deeply. Sometimes our mounts splashed for
a long distance through water five or six inches shallow. Underneath the
surface we could see the sh