The night riders, were coming into camp greeting their comrades with grunts, or in a few words telling them what to guard against in some particular part of the grazing herd.

The sun had risen. The cattle were on their feet browsing the short, sweet gra.s.s, moving slowly toward the river.

"Work," growled Show Low, "darn me if I ain't commenced to hate it."

Fresno picked up his saddle to follow his foreman, but paused long enough to fire this parting shot at the cook: "Say, Parenthesis, if them biscuits you're makin' is as hard as the last bunch, save four of 'em for me. I want to shoe that pony of mine."

Parenthesis threw a tin cup at Fresno, who dodged it. Punching the dough viciously, he said: "Darn this housekeepin'. Gets a feller's hands all rough,--it's enough to spile the disposition of a saint."

His soliloquy was interrupted by Buck McKee riding up to the wagon from Lazy K outfit, which was camping a mile below them.

"h.e.l.lo, Cookie! How goes it?" was his greeting.

"You wind it up, and it goes eight days." Parenthesis bellowed, his temper fast reaching the breaking-point.

"Jack Payson ain't back yet?" Buck asked, paying no attention to the bad humor of Parenthesis.

"Not that I knows on."

The cook rolled the dough with elaborate care.

"Nor Hoover?"

"Ain't seen him," he replied curtly.

"Well, they ain't comin' back, either. They pulled it off pretty slick on us fellers. Hoover he lets Payson go and makes a bluff at chasin'

after him. Then they gets off somewhere, splits up the money, and gives us the laugh."

Parenthesis turned on him in anger and shouted: "'I'll bet my outfit against a pair of green socks either one of 'em or both will be back here before this round-up is over."

"You will, eh?" snarled Buck. "Well, we're just waitin' for 'em.

We'll swing Payson so high he'll look like a buzzard, and as for Hoover--well, he's served his last term as sheriff in this yere county, you hear me shouting."

McKee cut his pony with his quirt and dashed away in time to escape an unwelcome encounter with several members of the Sweet.w.a.ter outfit who were riding back to camp.

"S-t-a-y with him, Bud, s-t-a-y with him," shouted Parenthesis, as the first of the cowboys pitched on a bucking horse past the chuck-wagon, the rider using quirt and spurs until he got the bronco into a lope.

The other boys followed, each cayuse apparently inventing some new sort of deviltry.

For two weeks before the round-up the outfit had been busting broncos at the home ranch. Each morning at dawn they started, working until the heat of the day forced them to rest. When the temperature crawls to 104 in the shade, and the alkali-dust is so thick in the corral that the hoofs raise a cloud in which horses can hide themselves twenty feet away, when eyes smart and the tongue aches in the parched mouth, it becomes almost impossible to handle yourself, let alone a kicking, struggling bronco.

As one day is like another, and one horse differs from another only in the order of his tricks to avoid the rope and the saddle, a glimpse of the horsemanship of Bud Lane and his fellows will serve as a general picture of life on any Western ranch.

The breaking of the ponies was the work of Bud Lane, who, through the influence of Polly, had broken with McKee and returned to work on Sweet.w.a.ter Ranch in order to a.s.sist Echo, with whom he had become reconciled on discovering that she had been loyal to his brother even to the extent of sending her husband into the desert to bring d.i.c.k back.

Bud was the youngest of the hands, but a lad born to the saddle and rope. "Weak head and strong back for a horse-fighter" is a proverb on the plains, and Bud had certainly acted the part.

Fresno and Show Low, with four flankers, had driven into the corral a half-dozen horses untouched by man's hands since the days of colthood.

A shout, a swing of a gate, and the beasts were huddled in the round corral, trembling and snorting. This corral has a circular fence slightly higher than a man's head with a snubbing-post in the center.

While this is going on, Bud has laid out his cow-saddle, single-rigged, his quirt, and pieces of gra.s.s rope for cross-hobbling.

"Ready, Bud?" asks Sage-brush.

"Yep," he replies, as he drops into the corral.

Bud adjusts the hondo and loop of his lariat, keeping his eye on the circling horses, and picking out his first victim. The rope snakes through the air, and falls over the head of a pony. Leaping, bucking, striking with his hoofs at the rope about his neck, the horse fights and snorts. As the rope tightens, shutting off his wind, he plunges less viciously.

Bud, with the help of Fresno and Show Low, takes a turn about the snubbing-post, easing up the rope to prevent the horse from breaking his neck when he falls.

The pony, with braced feet, hauls on the lariat, until choking, it throws itself. Bud in a twinkling has his knee on the bronco's neck.

Grasping the under jaw, he throws the head up in the air until the nose points skyward. The turn is slipped from the post, and the noose is slackened and pulled like a bridle over the animal's head, to be fastened curbwise to his under jaw. Stunned and choked, the horse fights for breath, giving Bud time to hobble his front feet and bridle it. Bud jumps aside as the bronco struggles to his feet. But every move of the beast to free itself results in a fall.

Meantime the hind foot has been noosed and fastened to the one in front. Bud has cross-hobbled the horse, preparing it for the saddle and the second lesson. Holding the pony by the reins and rope, Bud, after many failures, throws a saddle-blanket across its back. With one hand he must also toss a forty-pound saddle into place. Every move Bud makes is fought by the bronco, every touch of blanket resented. With his free hand, Bud must now slip the latigo strap through the cinch-ring. Dodging, twisting, struggling, covered with sweat, the horse foils Bud's quick movements. Finally he succeeds, and with one tight jerk the saddle is in place.

No time to think is given the beast. Fresno and Show Low remove the hobbles, but Bud is twisting an ear to distract its attention. This new torture must be met with a new defense, and the horse is so dazed that it stands still to puzzle out the problem.

This is what Bud has been waiting for. With the agility of a cat, he swings himself into the saddle. The pony arches its back like a bow-string, every muscle taut.

Bud jerks the reins. The horse moves forward, to find that its legs are free. Up it goes in a long curve, alighting with his four feet stiffly planted together. The head is down. Maddened and frightened, the bronco bawls, like a man in a nightmare. Up in air the animal goes again, drawing up its hind feet toward the belly, as if it would sc.r.a.pe off the cinch-strap. The fore feet are extended stiffly forward.

Every time the bronco hits the ground, the jar is like the fall of a pile-driver's weight. Bud watches every move. When the feet hit the earth, he rises in stirrups to escape the jolt. But always he is in the saddle, for any unexpected move.

The horse rises on its hind legs to throw the rider. Should it fall backward, the wind will be knocked of the animal, but Bud will be out of the saddle before he strikes the ground, and into it again before horse can struggle erect.

If it tries the trick again, Bud uses the quirt, lashing it about the ears, the flanks, and under the belly. There is not a part of the body into which the biting leather does not cut. Lashing the flanks drives the horse forward.

The struggle has been going on for twenty minutes. Bud is covered with sweat and dust. The horse has begun to sulk. It will not respond to rein or quirt.

Now is the time for the steel. Bud drives the spurs deep into its flanks. The horse plunges forward with a bounding leap. Again the spurs rasp, and again it plunges. The bronco finds that going ahead is the only way in which to avoid punishment. Round and round the corral it gallops until exhausted. The sweat is pouring off the brute in rivulets. It has taken Bud forty minutes to give the first lesson.

Easing up the bronco, Bud swings out of the saddle, and then remounts.

This is done a half-dozen times, as the horse stands panting and blowing. Then, with a quick movement, the saddle and bridle are flung against the post. Bud pats the bronco on the neck and the flank, and turns it loose for a second lesson in a couple of days. A third will follow before the end of the week. Then he will saddle the horses, unaided, ride them once or twice about the corral, and finally let one of the hands give each the first lesson on the open plains. This means a wild dash anywhere away from the ranch. The rider must avoid holes in the ground, and keep up the pace until the horse slows up on its own account. Four or five of these lessons with a post-graduate course in dodging a waving slicker, and Sage-brush will declare all of the broncos are "plumb gentle."

The men were riding out their new string to-day. As each pa.s.sed, Parenthesis flung a jibe at him. He had resumed his bread-making when Polly rode to the wagon.

"h.e.l.lo, Parenthesis!" was her greeting. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothin'. This yere housekeepin' is gettin' on my nervous system some fearful." Parenthesis struck the dough a savage whack, and added: "I ain't cut out for housekeepin'."

"You've been cut out all right," retorted Polly, glancing at his legs, "whatever it's for."

Parenthesis was not abashed. "Yep, fer straddlin' a hoss," he proudly replied, as if that were the chief end of man.

Polly, thus balked in her teasing, tried a new form of badinage.

"Say, the boys are all braggin' on your bread-makin'. Won't you give me your receipt?"

"Good cooks," said Parenthesis, "never give away their receipts. Brings bad luck to 'em next time."

"Aw, come now, Parenthy, tell me, an' I'll let you make my weddin'-cake."