from ten-thirty to one
o'clock. They had found him asleep under the chuck wagon, whence he was
hauled out, feet first, by one of the returning guards.

Tad had turned in early, as he was to be called shortly before one to go
out with the third guard and to remain on duty till half-past three.

For reasons of his own the foreman had given orders that all the ponies
not on actual duty, that night, were to be staked down instead of being
hobbled and turned out to graze.

Tad heard the order given, and noting the foreman's questioning glances
at the heavens, imagined that it had something to do with weather
conditions.

"Do you think Mr. Stallings is worried about the weather?" asked the lad
of Big-foot Sanders, as he rode along beside the big cowman on the way
to the bedding place of the herd.

"I reckon he is," was the brief answer.

"Then you think we are going to have a storm?"

"Ever been through a Texas storm?" asked Big-foot by way of answering
the boy's question.

"No."

"Well, you won't call it a storm after you have. There ain't no name in
the dictionary that exactly fits that kind of a critter. A stampede is a
Sunday in a country village as compared with one of them Texas howlers.
You'll be wishing you had a place to hide, in about a minute after that
kind of a ruction starts."

"Are they so bad as that?"

"Well, almost," answered the cowman. "I've heard tell," he continued,
"that they've been known to blow the horns off a Mexican cow. Why, you
couldn't check one of them things with a three inch rope and a snubbing
post."

Tad laughed at the quaintness of his companion's words. The sky near the
horizon was a dull, leaden hue, though above their heads the stars
twinkled reassuringly.

"It doesn't look very threatening to me," decided Tad Butler, gazing
intently toward the heavens.

"Well, here's where we split," announced the cowboy, riding off to the
left of the herd, Tad taking the right. Shortly after the lad heard the
big cowman break out in song:

"Two little niggers upstairs in bed,
One turned ober to de oder an' said,
How 'bout dat short'nin' bread,
How 'bout dat short'nin' bread?"

Tad pulled up his pony and listened until the song had been finished. It
was the cowpuncher's way of telling the herd that he had arrived and was
on hand to guard them against trouble.

"Big-foot seems to have a new song to-night," mused Tad.

Now the lad noticed that there was an oppres