on, for several steers showed fight, and when
released went on the prod for the first thing in sight. The herd was
grazing nearly a mile away during the afternoon, and as fast as a
steer was pulled out, some one would take a horse and give the freed
animal a start for the herd. One big black steer turned on Flood, who
generally attended to this, and gave him a spirited chase. In getting
out of the angry steer's way, he passed near the wagon, when the
maddened beef turned from Flood and charged the commissary. McCann was
riding the nigh wheel mule, and when he saw the steer coming, he
poured the whip into the mules and circled around like a battery in
field practice, trying to get out of the way. Flood made several
attempts to cut off the steer from the wagon, but he followed it like
a mover's dog, until a number of us, fearing our mules would be gored,
ran out of the water, mounted our horses, and joined in the chase.
When we came up with the circus, our foreman called to us to rope the
beef, and Fox Quarternight, getting in the first cast, caught him by
the two front feet and threw him heavily. Before he could rise,
several of us had dismounted and were sitting on him like buzzards on
carrion. McCann then drove the team around behind a sand dune, out of
sight; we released the beef, and he was glad to return to the herd,
quite sobered by the throwing.

Another incident occurred near the middle of the afternoon. From some
cause or other, the hind leg of a steer, after having been tied up,
became loosened. No one noticed this; but when, after several
successive trials, during which Barney McCann exhausted a large
vocabulary of profanity, the mule team was unable to move the steer,
six of us fastened our lariats to the main rope, and dragged the beef
ashore with great _eclat_. But when one of the boys dismounted to
unloose the hobbles and rope, a sight met our eyes that sent a
sickening sensation through us, for the steer had left one hind leg in
the river, neatly disjointed at the knee. Then we knew why the mules
had failed to move him, having previously supposed his size was the
difficulty, for he was one of the largest steers in the herd. No doubt
the steer's leg had been unjointed in swinging him around, but it had
taken six extra horses to sever the ligaments and skin, while the
merciless quicksands of the Canadian held the limb. A friendly shot
ended the steer's sufferings, and before we finished our work for the
da