"Pretty near, I guess. That's what the Mex meant when I caught him at the door. Gee, I wish----"

He was interrupted by a rattling and creaking, and the sound of horses beating a fast tattoo on the hard earth. Above this bedlam arose the sound of a voice in loud and vigorous denunciation.

"Here she comes!" Nort cried. "The food! Say, that team must have been stepping right along. Got here almost as soon as you did, d.i.c.k."

With a final roar and crash of wooden timbers, and a last invocation to: "Hold up there, you two wildcats, or I'll bust you wide open," the cart drew up to the ranch house door.

From its swaying side the driver, a grinning youth in a blue shirt and red bandanna 'kerchief about his neck, climbed down.

"Get here in time?" he called. "Sure had these here babies rollin'

right along." Then without even a halt for breath he went on: "What do you think of this here team? Best pair of ponies in the state! Lean down, baby, 'til I smooth those ears of yours. Down, I say! Why, you spavin-boned piece of horse meat! Come down here or I'll chew you up!

Throw your head back at me, will you? Of all the knock-kneed, wall-eyed chunks of locoed craziness, you're the worst. Pete, you pink-headed, glandered cayuse, drop that neck or I'll skin you alive.

That's the stuff! Best little pair of broncoes in the state, boys!"

"You sure got some vocabulary!" laughed d.i.c.k. "Think a lot of your team, don't you--sometimes! Yes, you got here in plenty of time."

"Bring them yellow clings?" the Kid asked, anxiously.

"Yep! Two dozen cans of the best yellow cling peaches. An' flour, bacon, an' all the rest. Help me unload, boys."

With five pairs of willing hands on the job, the wagon was quickly relieved of its load. The food was carried into the kitchen, and left there for the cook with an admonition to: "Get busy, Mex. We're starved!"

"Thanks for bringing the stuff over so promptly," d.i.c.k said to the youthful driver. "You must have hit only the high spots to get here so quick."

"Should say I did! One time we left the ground and stayed up while a coyote ran under the whole length of the wagon. Can't beat this here team of mine for speed. Well, guess I'll be gettin' back. All set, ponies? Don't strain yourselves, now. Got plenty of time. Just go along nice an' easy. Yes, sir, boys, I love these animals like brothers!

"Get along there, Pete. Get along, I say. Pete, you lop-eared w.a.n.gdoddle! Quit draggin' that other bronc around! Hear me? Dodgast your hide, I'll blow your fool head right off your worthless carca.s.s if you don't quit that. You will, will you? How do you like the feel of that? Now we're off! At-a-baby, get goin'! So long, boys! You, Pete! Gosh darn your senseless hide, I'll--" the rest was lost.

"He loves 'em like brothers!" shouted the Kid, holding his sides with laughter. "Oh, boy! 'Take your time, ponies!' Sure, they'll take their time! Bet he's half way to Roarin' River by now. Wow, what a driver! Ho-ho--I haven't had a laugh like this in years! 'Don't strain yourselves!' Oh, baby!"

A cloud of dust marked the disappearance of the grinning youth with the "best pair of ponies in the state." He left behind him an appreciative audience.

"Hope that Mex gets a wiggle on," Nort said when the laughter had quieted down. "He ought to be able to rustle a pretty fair meal with all that junk."

"And in the meantime we might as well sit," Yellin' Kid suggested.

"Look over the landscape."

The punchers made their way to the corral. Without explaining, each knew the Kid's suggestion to "sit an' look over the landscape" meant a view from the top rail of the corral, which was several feet high.

This is the cowboy's favorite resting place while waiting for "chuck."

They will sit there and survey a perfectly familiar scene until called off by the cook's horn or the cry to "come an' git it."

"Bud ought to be back for grub," said d.i.c.k as he swung his leg over the top rail.

"Ought to," Nort agreed. "Said he wasn't going far."

"That might mean anything out here," Billee Dobb broke in, "from a two-mile jaunt to a ride of twenty mile or more. Bud's O. K. though.

If he don't show up fer his meals he's got a good reason."

"You're probably right," d.i.c.k said, "but with all this trouble around here I don't like to see anyone stay away too long. If he doesn't come in before afternoon we'll have to take a ride around and see if we can't spot him."

"No use crossing bridges before we come to them," Nort declared.

"After all this talk Bud will probably come riding in with a bear cub he chased. Bud's funny that way. Anything that's a bit out of the ordinary, and Bud will go miles out of his way to see it. Remember how he stared at that cyclone coming until he forgot where he was?"

"I don't think he's so funny," the Kid declared in a thoughtful tone.

"Just doesn't like to miss any of the show, that's all. Me, I'm like that sometimes. A pretty sunset gets me here somehow," and the Kid placed his hand on his stomach in a general way.

"Have you tried eating raw onions?" Nort asked in a solicitous voice.

"They say they're awful good."

"Aw, you guys make me sick," said Yellin' Kid disgustedly. "Just as soon as a feller gets--well--poetical like--you hop all over him."

"Ex-cuse me, Kid! I didn't know you were getting poetical. Why, if I had known that I wouldn't have said a word. I thought you were telling us about your indigestion."

"Go ahead--go ahead! I'll get you sometime, Nort. Billee, do you think it's nice to run me around like that?"

"Do you good," Billee said with a grin. "When I was young an' worked out with a bunch from Two-bar Cross--the roughest outfit you'd ever laid eyes on--I wasn't let to open my mouth without someone hoppin'

down my throat. That was a gang, let me tell you!"

"They were the old-fashioned punchers, weren't they?" d.i.c.k asked, winking at the Kid. "The kind that used a buck-strap and ate his coffee out of a frying-pan."

"Buck-strap! Buck--say, boy, if any man on that there Two-bar Cross outfit ever heard you speak of a buck-strap they wouldn't know what you was talkin' about. No, sir! Those boys were rough customers."

A buck-strap is a leather thong fastened to the saddle in such a way that if the pony suddenly bucks, its rider can hold himself on by inserting his hand within this thong and pulling hard. The user of one of these contraptions is never proud of it, needless to say.

"You used to work a lot in the summer, didn't you, Billee?" the Kid asked with a concealed grin.

"Yes, and in the winter, too. Mostly in the winter. I remember one time----"

"Now he's off," the Kid whispered in an aside to d.i.c.k. "This'll be good."

"I remember once when I was ridin' for the Two-bar Cross bunch an' we had four thousand head of cattle on the range. 'Long about December, when the first snow starts, me an' Joe Heldig was sent out to see how the bunch was makin' out, and if they needed anything, one of us was to ride back an' tell the rest while the other watched. Well, we set out about seven o'clock one morning to see if we could spot the herd.

"It was clear an' cold when we started. Not a cloud in the sky.

Thinks I, we're pretty lucky, havin' such fine weather; that late in the season, too. Joe Heldig, he don't say nothin'. We took with us our blankets, some sour-dough, coffee an' bacon, an' that fryin'-pan you was talking about, d.i.c.k. We rode along easy like, not worryin' nor nothin', an' talkin' about the best way to skin a steer, an' whether it's best to split two pair on the draw to try for a flush. That used to be a trick of Joe's.

"Around about noon it started to get warmer, an' off in the east a few white clouds showed up. Me, I don't worry none, but I see Joe lookin'

kind of anxious now an' then.

"We found the bunch at three o'clock, not as far out as we figgered they'd be. Seemed pretty contented an' easy. Had a good grazin' spot, too. An' just as we was about to call it a day I felt something wet drop on my nose. Then another. Joe looked at me an' I looked at him.

Snow! Know what that means on the range?

"Well, there was nothin' for it but to stick around an' see how bad it was goin' to be. By five o'clock we knew. The flakes was comin' down so thick you couldn't see, and a wind had sprung up. An' Joe an' me had a bunch of cattle on our hands. I told Joe one of us better try to make the ranch and bring back enough men to get the cattle to a sheltered spot, so they wouldn't die. I knew we couldn't move them alone, and where they were grazin' it was all open. So Joe started.

He knew the general direction, an' what would be sure suicide for anyone else was just a chance for Joe, havin' lived for twenty years right in that section.

"I could easy keep track of the cows by their moanin'. It was real cold now, an' the poor bunch of beeves stood in the snow with their heads held low, with icicles hanging from their eyes, groanin'

something pitiful. They never moved. Just stood there while the snow drifted up around their haunches. What I was afraid of was a drift.

Not a drift of snow, but a drift of cattle.