. If he drives our
stock we'll know it; if Dene steals, it can be proved that he steals."

"Well, what then? Do you think he'll care for that, or Holderness
either?"

"No, only it makes this difference: both things will then be barefaced
robbery. We've never been able to prove anything, though we boys know;
we don't need any proof. Father gives these men the benefit of a doubt.
We've got to stand by him. I know, George, your hand's begun to itch for
your gun. So does mine. But we've orders to obey."

Many gullies and canyons headed up on the slope of Coconina west of
Silver Cup, and ran down to open wide on the flat desert. They contained
plots of white sage and bunches of rich grass and cold springs. The
steers that ranged these ravines were wild as wolves, and in the tangled
thickets of juniper and manzanita and jumbles of weathered cliff they
were exceedingly difficult to catch.

Well it was that Hare had received his initiation and had become inured
to rough, incessant work, for now he came to know the real stuff of
which these Mormons were made. No obstacle barred them. They penetrated
the gullies to the last step; they rode weathered slopes that were
difficult for deer to stick upon; they thrashed the bayonet-guarded
manzanita copses; they climbed into labyrinthine fastnesses, penetrating
to every nook where a steer could hide. Miles of sliding slope and
marble-bottomed streambeds were ascended on foot, for cattle could climb
where a horse could not. Climbing was arduous enough, yet the hardest
and most perilous toil began when a wild steer was cornered. They roped
the animals on moving slopes of weathered stone, and branded them on the
edges of precipices.

The days and weeks passed, how many no one counted or cared. The circle
of the sun daily lowered over the south end of Coconina; and the black
snow-clouds crept down the slopes. Frost whitened the ground at dawn,
and held half the day in the shade. Winter was close at the heels of the
long autumn.

As for Hare, true to August Naab's assertion, he had lost flesh and
suffered, and though the process was heartbreaking in its severity,
he hung on till he hardened into a leather lunged, wire-muscled man,
capable of keeping pace with his companions.

He began his day with the dawn when he threw off the frost-coated
tarpaulin; the icy water brought him a glow of exhilaration; he drank in
the spiced cold air, and there was the spring of the deer-hunter in his