. All set. Turn loose!"

The men stepped back and the four horses hit the collars raggedly. One
wheel horse reared and jumped forward. The off leader dropped his head
and pitched, shaking himself as if struggling to unseat a rider, then
the four settled into a jerky run and the heavy wagon clattered and
lurched down the lane.

"Fine way to break work stock," Harris remarked to Evans. "That layout
would bring maybe a dollar a head."

The men swung to their saddles and followed the wagon at a shuffling
trot. From where she rode between Evans and Harris, the girl turned in
her saddle and watched two men throw open the gates of the big corral
where the remuda was held. The wrangler, whose duty it was to tend the
horse herd by day, and the nighthawk who would guard it at night sat on
their horses at the far end of the corral and urged the herd out as the
gates swung back. The remuda streamed down the valley, the two first
riders swinging wide to either flank while the nighthawk and wrangler
brought up the rear.

The four that pulled the wagon had settled to a steady gait and when
some three miles below the Three Bar Waddles wheeled to the right and
angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting
perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling
country that showed not even a wagon track. The big cook unerringly
picked the route of least resistance to the point from which the first
circle would be launched, striking every wash and coulee at a place
where a crossing was possible.

Shortly before noon the wagon was halted in a broad bottom threaded by
a tiny spring-fed stream. The teams were unhitched; mounts were
unsaddled and thrown into the horse herd, which was then headed into
the mouth of a branching draw and allowed to graze. Waddles dumped off
the bed rolls that were piled from the broad lowered tail-gate to the
wagon top and each man sorted out his own and spread it upon some spot
which struck him as a likely bed ground.

One man carried water from the stream. Two others snaked in wood for
the chuck-wagon fire. Still another drove long stakes in the shape of
a hollow square, stretching a single rope from one to the next and
fashioning a frail rope corral.

Harris and Evans took three poles that were slung under the wagon,
looped the top-rope of a little teepee round the small ends of them and
erected the three, tripod fashion, after having first pegged down the
te