to the lower
corrals of the Lone Dog to gather up a herd of steers there and drive
them across to the Sunk Hole. It would mean long hours in the saddle,
but Conniston told himself that riding, urging on lagging cattle,
would be almost rest after the drudgery of the last four days. And in
some elusive way, not clear to himself, he felt that this work
carried with it a bit less humiliation than the sort of "hired man's
work" which he had been doing with Lonesome Pete.

Like many men who know of the range only what they have read in books,
only what they have seen in breezy pictures, it seemed to Conniston
that there could be no life so lazy as that of the cowboy who has
nothing to do but ride a spirited horse, day in and day out to drive
sluggish-blooded cows from one pasture to another or to a
market-place, to watch over them as they grazed, or to ride along the
outskirts of a scattering herd to see that they did not stray beyond a
set boundary-line. That life, as he saw it, was an existence without
responsibility, without fatigue, even tinged with something of
exhilaration as one galloped up and down over wide grassy meadows.
To-day he began to learn that a gay-colored picture may hide quite as
much as it shows.

They left the Half Moon corrals at a gentle canter, Conniston swinging
along beside the other men, actually enjoying himself. He wondered at
the deliberate slowness with which Rawhide Jones and Toothy began
their errand. For he had heard the few short orders which Brayley had
given, and he knew that to-day was a day of haste, with much to be
done. But before they had cantered more than a mile across the rolling
country to the west he saw that there was going to be no loitering.
They had ridden slowly only until their horses had "warmed up," and
now, shaking out their reins loosely, they swept on at a pace which
allowed of little conversation. They drew away from the Half Moon
corrals at four o'clock. It was not yet six when they pulled in their
panting, sweat-covered horses at the corrals of the Lone Dog.

These corrals were at the lower, eastern end of the Lone Dog, and some
ten miles from the Lone Dog bunk-house. To reach them the three men
had ridden across three spurs of the mountains, across much rough
country, and always at a swinging gallop. Conniston's legs, where they
rubbed against the sweat leathers of his saddle, were already chafed
and raw. With the day's work still ahead of him he was tired and