While we paid little attention to wind or weather, this was an ideal night, and we were laggard in seeking our blankets.  Yarn followed yarn; for nearly every one of us, either from observation or from practical experience, had a slight acquaintance with the great mastering passion.  But the poetical had not been developed in us to an appreciative degree, so we discussed the topic under consideration much as we would have done horses or cattle.

Finally the game ended.  A general yawn went the round of the loungers about the fire.  The second guard had gone on, and when the first rode in, Joe Stallings, halting his horse in passing the fire, called out sociably, “That muley steer, the white four year old, didn’t like to bed down amongst the others, so I let him come out and lay down by himself.  You’ll find him over on the far side of the herd.  You all remember how wild he was when we first started?  Well, you can ride within three feet of him to-night, and he’ll grunt and act sociable and never offer to get up.  I promised him that he might sleep alone as long as he was good; I just love a good steer.  Make down our bed, pardner; I’ll be back as soon as I picket my horse.”

CHAPTER VII

THE COLORADO

The month of May found our Circle Dot herd, in spite of all drawbacks, nearly five hundred miles on its way.  For the past week we had been traveling over that immense tableland which skirts the arid portion of western Texas.  A few days before, while passing the blue mountains which stand as a southern sentinel in the chain marking the headwaters of the Concho River, we had our first glimpse of the hills.  In its almost primitive condition, the country was generous, supplying every want for sustenance of horses and cattle.  The grass at this stage of the season was well matured, the herd taking on flesh in a very gratifying manner, and, while we had crossed some rocky country, lame and sore-footed cattle had as yet caused us no serious trouble.

One morning when within one day’s drive of the Colorado River, as our herd was leaving the bed ground, the last guard encountered a bunch of cattle drifting back down the trail.  There were nearly fifty head of the stragglers; and as one of our men on guard turned them to throw them away from our herd, the road brand caught his eye, and he recognized the strays as belonging to the Ellison herd which had passed us at the Indian Lakes some ten days before.  Flood’s attention once drawn to the brand, he ordered them thrown into our herd.  It was evident that some trouble had occurred with the Ellison cattle, possibly a stampede; and it was but a neighborly act to lend any assistance in our power.  As soon as the outfit could breakfast, mount, and take the herd, Flood sent Priest and me to scout the country to the westward of the trail, while Bob Blades and Ash Borrowstone started on a similar errand to the eastward, with orders to throw in any drifting cattle in the Ellison road brand.  Within an hour after starting, the herd encountered several straggling bands, and as Priest and I were on the point of returning to the herd, we almost overrode a bunch of eighty odd head lying down in some broken country.  They were gaunt and tired, and The Rebel at once pronounced their stiffened movements the result of a stampede.