nused to rustling for two; _orehannas_
with no mothers to guide them to the feed; rough steers that had been
"busted" and half-crippled by some reckless cowboy--all the
unfortunate and incapable ones, standing dead-eyed and hopeless or
limping stiffly about.

A buzzard rose lazily from a carcass as they approached, and they
paused to note the brand. Then Creede shook his head bodingly and rode
into the bunch by the spring. At a single glance the _rodeo_ boss
recognized each one of them and knew from whence he came. He jumped
his horse at a wild steer and started him toward the ridges; the cows
with calves he rounded up more gently, turning them into the upper
trail; the _orehannas_, poor helpless orphans that they were, followed
hopefully, leaving one haggard-eyed old stag behind.

Creede looked the retreating band over critically and shook his head
again.

"Don't like it," he observed, briefly; and then, unlocking the
ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he
went in and fetched out the axe. "Guess I'll cut a tree for that old
stiff," he said.

From his stand by the long troughs where all the mountain cattle
watered in Summer, the disconsolate old stag watched the felling of
the tree curiously; then after an interval of dreary contemplation, he
racked his hide-bound skeleton over to the place and began to browse.
Presently the rocks began to clatter on the upper trail, and an old
cow that had been peering over the brow of the hill came back to get
her share. Even her little calf, whose life had been cast in thorny
ways, tried his new teeth on the tender ends and found them good. The
_orehannas_ drifted in one after the other, and other cows with
calves, and soon there was a little circle about the tree-top,
munching at the soft, brittle twigs.

"Well, that settles it," said Creede. "One of us stays here and cuts
brush, and the other works around Hidden Water. This ain't the first
drought I've been through, not by no means, and I've learned this
much: the Alamo can be dry as a bone and Carrizo, too, but they's
always water here and at the home ranch. Sooner or later every cow on
the range will be goin' to one place or the other to drink, and if we
give 'em a little bait of brush each time it keeps 'em from gittin'
too weak. As long as a cow will rustle she's all right, but the minute
she's too weak to travel she gits to be a water-bum--hangs around the
spring and drinks until she starv