d fallen. Across the bodies a wave
of the battle flowed.

Once the Indians rallied, but so sudden was the attack, so irresistible
the forward dash of the cavalrymen, that they became discouraged, and
broke and fled toward their horses, with the soldiers in pursuit.

Slim hurried to Dick's side, seeing he was the worst hurt. As he knelt
beside him, the dying man opened his eyes and smiled. Leaning over him,
Slim heard him gently whisper: "Tell her I know she was true, and not
to mind."

With a deep sigh, his eyelids fluttered, and all was still.

The scouts had taken charge of Jack, who was unconscious, and bleeding
freely.

From the spring the fighting had drifted southward. Few of the Indians
reached the horses, and fewer still got away. Scattering shots showed
the hunt for those who fled on foot was still on.

Then soft and mellow over canon and mesa and butte floated the
bugle-call, recalling the cavalrymen to the guidon. Back they came,
cheering and tumultuous, only to be silenced by the presence of their
dead.

They buried Dick's body near the spring, and carved his name with a
cavalry saber on a boulder near-by.

At dawn the next day they began the long march back to Fort Grant.

Slim took charge of Jack, nursing him back to life.

CHAPTER XIV

The Round-up

Much has been written of the passing of the cowboy. With the fenced
range, winter feeding, and short drives his occupation once appeared to
be gone. But the war of the sheep and cattlemen in the Western States
has recently caused the government to compel the cattlemen to remove
the fences and permit the herds of sheep and cattle to range over
public lands, and this means a return of the regime of the cowboy, with
its old institutions.

Chief among these is the round-up.

A sheepman can shear wherever he happens to be. He can entrain at the
nearest shipping-point to his grazing-bed. But a herd of cattle will
range four hundred miles in a season, so the cattlemen will be forced
to revive the round-up, and make the long drives either back to the
home ranch, or to the railroad. More cowboys will have to be employed.
All the free life of the open will return. At work the cow-puncher is
not of the drinking, carousing, fight-hunting type; nor again is he of
the daring romantic school. He is a Western man of the plains. True,
after loading up his cattle and getting "paid off," he may spend his
vacation with less dignity and quiet than