at last came gray dawn.

As the light grew brighter his eyes widened and forgot their
sleep-hunger; he had not thought it would be like this. He was riding
part way across one end of a herd larger than his imagination had ever
pictured; three thousand cattle had seemed to him a multitude--yet
here were more than twenty thousand, wet, draggled, their backs humped
miserably from the rain which but a half hour since had ceased. He was
still gazing and wondering when Park rode up to him.

"Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?" he greeted.

"No, only Sunfish," snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip
Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the
provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man
of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector,
follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate
his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker
deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the
sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly twinkled, it
was so clean of clouds.

Bob watched him with eyes that laughed. "My, you're an ambitious
son-of-a-gun," he chuckled. "And you've got the slicker question settled
in your mind, I see; yuh learn easy; it takes two or three soakings to
learn some folks."

"We've got to go back and help with the herd, haven't we?" Thurston
asked. "The horses are all out."

"Yep. They'll stay out, too, till noon, m'son. We hike to bed, if
anybody should ask yuh."

So it was not till after dinner that he rode back to the great
herd--with his Kodak in his pocket--to find the cattle split up
into several bunches. The riders at once went to work separating the
different brands. He was too green a hand to do anything but help hold
the "cut," and that was so much like ordinary herd-ing that his interest
flagged. He wanted, more than anything, to ride into the bunch and
single out a Lazy Eight steer, skillfully hazing him down the slope to
the cut, as he saw the others do.

Bob told him it was the biggest mix-up he had ever seen, and Bob had
ridden the range in every State where beef grows wild. He was in the
thickest of the huddle, was Bob, working as if he did not know the
meaning of fatigue. Thurston, watching him thread his way in and out of
the restless, milling herd, only to reappear unexpectedly at the edge
with a steer just before the nose