orld that he could think of, Alan Howard felt his
face going red. Carr's look probed deeper. Then, with common consent,
they turned to other subjects until bedtime. Nothing of business
matters passed between them, although both remembered that a
considerable payment was to fall due within ten days.

In particular Howard had cause to remember. He had recently balanced
his books and had found that he had cut into his last five thousand
dollars. Therefore, meaning to pay on the nail, he had arranged a sale
of beef cattle. The range was heavily stocked, he had a herd in prime
condition, the market was fair, and his system called for a sale soon
and the purchase of some calves. Therefore the next morning, before
Carr was astir, Howard and several of his men were riding toward the
more remote fields where his beef herds were. Behind them came the
camp wagon and the cook.

All day long he worked among his herds, gathering them, sorting them,
cutting out and heading back towards the home corrals those under
weight or in any way not in the pink of condition for the sale. His
men rode away into the distances, going east and south, disappearing
over the ridges seeking cattle that had strayed far. Howard changed
the horse under him four times that day, and the beast he freed long
after the stars were out was jaded and wet. In the end he threw
himself down upon the hot earth in the shade of the wagon and turned
his eyes toward the uplands of the Last Ridge. He had had no moment of
his own to-day, no opportunity to ride for a call on his new friends,
and now, after he rested a little and ate, he would go back to work
with his men, night-herding. For the rounded-up cattle were now a
great milling herd that grew greater as the night went on and other
lesser bands were brought in, a stamping, churning mass whose
deep-lunged bellowing surged out continuously across the valley
stretches and through the passes of the hills.

To-morrow, thought Howard, he would ride toward the Last Ridge, taking
it upon himself to gather up the straggling stock there, and, purely
incidentally, he would look in upon the Longstreets. He had not seen
them for three days. But the night was destined to bring events to
alter his plans. In the first place, some of his cowboys whom he had
dispatched to outlying districts of the range to round up the cattle
there had not yet returned, and he and his men here were short-handed
in their task of nigh