admiration in their eyes.  Judith sat Swift lightly, edging mischievously now against one rider, now another.  Swift bit Buster, who reared while Douglas swore laughingly.  Magpies swooped from the blue spruce at the edge of the corral, black and white against pale blue.  The cattle, all Herefords, red and white, milled about and lowed and tossed worried heads.  The riders, sheepskin chaps flapping, bright neckerchiefs fluttering, shouted and cursed and fingered their lariats.  Dogs, yellow dogs, black dogs, gray dogs, spotted dogs, continuously encroached from without the fence and were ordered or lashed away.

Suddenly Swift shot from the group of horses.  Judith spun her lariat and a lusty young steer, well back toward the south fence, turned and stumbled.  Swift sat back on her haunches, turned as she rose and leaped toward the dehorning corral.  The bellowing steer was dragged backward, his left foot securely roped.  He fell as they reached the gate and skidded helplessly on his side through the trampled yellow snow.

The men by the fire were ready.  One of them perched on the steer’s flank and freed the lariat, while another sat astride his neck and amidst a gush of blood sawed off the horns close to the head.  John seared the stubs with the hot iron dipped in tar.  The poor brute bellowed with fright and pain.  Judith recoiled her lariat and made way for Jimmy Day, who slid up with a protesting heifer.

“’Jude!” he shouted.  “You’re the cow ropingest girl in the Rockies!  Say, Jude, ain’t you afraid that baa-baa you’re riding will buck with you?  Swift!  What a hell of a name for that thing!”

“She can beat you roping ’em at that, Jimmy!” cried Douglas.

“Better ride light, Jimmy,” warned John.  “She thinks more of that mare than she does of me.”

“All right, John,” laughed Jimmy.  “Take this heifer, fellows!  She thinks she’s a moose!”

“She’ll think she’s a kitten when we finish with her,” chuckled John.

There was an uproar now in the two corrals that echoed from mountain to mountain.  The trampled snow was crimson.  White angora and sheepskin chaps were gaumed with thick clots of blood.  The horses, half frantic from the smell of the bleeding cattle, tried every means in their not limited repertoires to bolt the hateful job.

The work had gone fast and furiously for some time when Douglas touched his father on the arm.

“Dad, look up on the shoulder of old Dead Line!”

John straightened his back and shaded his eyes.  A rider leading a Hereford was coming down the ridge.

“That’s Scott’s horse, Grover,” said Douglas.  “Can you make out the rider?”

“Not yet.”  John continued to stare intently.  Others noticed his posture and followed his gaze.

“It’s Scott Parsons!” cried Charleton Falkner.

“Shall we go get him?” exclaimed Jimmy Day.

“No.  He’s starved out and giving up.  Let’s hear what he has to say,” said John.