bread pan. A snappy cook, Henry; on
occasion he had built dinner for thirty men in thirty minutes, by the
watch, from the time the wagon stopped--bread, coffee, steak and fried
potatoes--steak and potatoes made ready for cooking the night before,
of course. Henry had not known he was being timed, either; he was
that kind of a cook.

Johnny gave thanks and ate; he rolled a substantial lunch in a clean
flour sack and tied it in his slicker behind the saddle. He rode to
the horse herd; Pat rounded up the horses and Johnny snared his
Twilight horse for the trip. Twilight was a _grullo_; that is to
say, he was precisely the color of a Maltese cat--a sleek velvet
slaty-blue; a graceful, half-wild creature, dainty muzzled, clean
legged as a deer. Pat held Twilight by bit and bridle and made
soothing statements to him while Johnny saddled. Johnny slid into
the saddle, there was a brief hair-stirring session of bucking; then
Twilight sneezed cheerfully and set off on a businesslike trot. Johnny
waved good-by, and turned across the gray plain toward Upham. Looking
back, he saw the van of the day herd just showing up, a blur in the
southeast.

Six miles brought him to Upham--side track, section house, low
station, windmill tower and tank; there was a deep well here. He
crossed the old white scar of the Santa Fe trail, broad, deep worn,
little used and half forgotten. A new and narrow road turned here at
right angles to the old trail and led ruler-straight to the west.
Johnny followed this climbing road, riding softly; bands of cattle
stirred uneasily and made off to left or right in frantic run or
shuffling trot. The road curved once only, close to the hills, to
round the head of a rock-walled, deep, narrow gash, square and
straight and sheer, reaching away toward Rincon, paralleling the
course of the mountains. No soft water-washed curves marked that grim
gash; here the earth crust had cracked and fallen apart; for twenty
miles that gray crack made an impassable barrier; between here and the
bare low hills was a No Man's Land.

Midway of the twisting pass Johnny came to a gate in a drift fence
strung from bluff to bluff; here was a frontier of the Bar Cross
country. He passed the outpost hills and came out to a rolling open
park, a big square corral of cedar pickets, an earthen dam, a deep
five-acre tank of water. About this tank two or three hundred head of
cattle basked comfortably in the warm sun, most of them lying down.