g in Colorado, and some fellows I knew had
a big cattle ranch down in New Mexico. It was a real ranch--not a two for
a cent one like Herrick's. I went down to visit them at round-up time. I'd
never seen a round-up before so I was hanging around every chance I got.

"They had a lot of cattle--some of them pretty wild--and it wasn't easy to
keep 'em together especially at night. Well, one day Jim Masters got a
fall from his horse and a kick on the head from another when he was down,
and he was in a pretty bad state--it looked to us like concussion of the
brain but we didn't know. We carried him into a tent we'd put up about a
quarter of a mile from where the cattle were, and one of the boys rode to
town for a doctor.

"We were up on a mesa, like the one we crossed yesterday, remember? We had
outlaw cattle in the bunch and it took all the boys to handle them. I,
being a tenderfoot and not much use with the cattle, said I'd sit with Jim
and sort of watch him till the doctor came. He was out of his head so
'twasn't any comfort to him but it made the boys feel better."

"I'll bet it was a comfort to him, Marc Scott! You are the sort of person
it would be a comfort to have around if one was out of one's head," said
Polly, emphatically.

"Thank you, honey; I'm afraid you're jollying me. Anyhow, I stayed with
Jim and while he lay there groaning I sat in the doorway of the tent and
smoked--wasn't anything I could do for the poor boy. Man, that was a
night! The mesa just like a big green table spread under the sky--what is
it that lunger poet said--'under the wide and starry sky'? Well, that's
how she looked. Mountains all around, moon blazing away showing up the
cattle at the other end of the mesa, not a sound except the river, one of
those busy little rivers that keep it up night and day. If I'd known
something of cattle I wouldn't have thought that stillness was so pretty,
but I didn't. I hadn't even noticed that the cows had stopped
bellowing--it seemed like a night that ought to be still.

"When, all of a sudden, I saw a movement in that bunch of cattle. It was a
stampede. That's what they're cooking up, you know, when they're still
like that. Before I'd realized what had happened they began to bolt--and
in our direction. It was just exactly as if one of those old bulls had
said to the crowd: 'There's a couple of stiffs in a tent down by the
river, boys, let's rush 'em.'

"They came down that mesa like all heck let loose