sage bushes and sang to him that the world was good. Sober gray curlews circled over his head, their long, funny bills thrust out straight as if to point the way for their bodies to follow and cried, "Kor-r-eck, kor-r-eck!"—which means just what the meadow larks sang. So Thurston, hearing it all about him, seeing it and smelling it and feeling the riot of Spring in his blood, straightened the hunch out of his shoulders and admitted that it was all true: that the world was good.
At Miles City he found himself in the midst of a small army, the regulars of the range—which grew hourly larger as the outfits rolled in. The rattle of mess-wagons, driven by the camp cook and followed by the bed-wagon, was heard from all directions. Jingling cavvies (herds of saddle horses they were, driven and watched over by the horse wrangler) came out of the wilderness in the wake of the wagons. Thurston got out his camera and took pictures of the scene. In the first, ten different camps appeared; he mourned because two others were perforced omitted. Two hours later he snapped the Kodak upon fifteen, and there were four beyond range of the lens.
Park came along, saw what he was doing and laughed. "Yuh better wait till they commence to come," he said. "When yuh can stand on this little hill and count fifty or sixty outfits camped within two or three miles uh here, yuh might begin taking pictures."
"I think you're loading me," Thurston retorted calmly, winding up the roll for another exposure.
"All right—suit yourself about it." Park walked off and left him peering into the view-finder.
Still they came. From Swift Current to the Cypress Hills the Canadian cattlemen sent their wagons to join the big meet. From the Sweet Grass Hills to the mouth of Milk River not a stock-grower but was represented. From the upper Musselshell they came, and from out the Judith Basin; from Shellanne east to Fort Buford. Truly it was a gathering of the clans such as eastern Montana had never before seen.
For a day and a night the cowboys made merry in town while their foremen consulted and the captains appointed by the Association mapped out the different routes. At times like these, foremen such as Park and Deacon Smith were shorn of their accustomed power, and worked under orders as strict as those they gave their men.
Their future movements thoroughly understood, the army moved down upon the range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's work began; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winter had wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunes from the wilderness, and to hold once more their sway over the range-land.
Their method called for concerted action, although it was simple enough. Two of the Lazy Eight wagons, under Park and Gene Wasson (for Hank that spring was running four crews and had promoted Gene wagon-boss of one), joined forces with the Circle-Bar, the Flying U, and a Yellowstone outfit whose wagon-boss, knowing best the range, was captain of the five crews; and drove north, gathering and holding all stock which properly ranged beyond the Missouri.
That meant day after day of "riding circle"—which is, being interpreted, riding out ten or twelve miles from camp, then turning and driving everything before them to a point near the center of the circle thus formed. When they met the cattle were bunched, and all stock which belonged on that range was cut out, leaving only those which had crossed the river during the storms of winter. These were driven on to the next camping place and held, which meant constant day-herding and night-guarding work which cowboys hate more than anything else.
There would be no calf roundup proper that spring, for all calves were branded as they were gathered. Many there were among the she-stock that would not cross the river again; their carcasses made unsightly blots in the coulee-bottoms and on the wind-swept levels. Of the calves that had followed their mothers on the long trail, hundreds had dropped out of the march and been left behind for the wolves. But not all. Range-bred cattle are blessed with rugged constitutions and can bear much of cold and hunger. The cow that can turn tail to a biting wind the while she ploughs to the eyes in snow and roots out a very satisfactory living for herself breeds calves that will in time do likewise and grow fat and strong in the doing. He is a sturdy, self-reliant little rascal, is the range-bred calf.
When fifteen hundred head of mixed stock, bearing Northern brands, were in the hands of the day-herders, Park and his crew were detailed to take them on and turn them loose upon their own range north of Milk River. Thurston felt that he had gleaned about all the experience he needed, and more than enough hard riding and short sleeping and hurried eating. He announced that he was ready. to bid good-by to the range. He would help take the herd home, he told Park, and then he intended to hit the trail for little, old New York.
He still agreed with the meadow larks that the world was good, but he had made himself believe that he really thought the civilized portion of it was better, especially when the uncivilized part holds a girl who persists in saying no when she should undoubtedly say yes, and insists that a man must be a hero, else she will have none of him.
Chapter 12 High Water
It was nearing the middle of June, and it was getting to be a very hot June at that. For two days the trail-herd had toiled wearily over the hills and across the coulees between the Missouri and Milk River. Then the sky threatened for a day, and after that they plodded in the rain.
"Thank the Lord that's done with," sighed Park when he saw the last of the herd climb, all dripping, up the north bank of the Milk River. "To-morrow we can turn 'em loose. And I tell yuh, Bud, we didn't get across none too soon. Yuh notice how the river's coming up? A day later and we'd have had to hold the herd on the other side, no telling how long."
"It is higher than usual; I noticed that," Thurston agreed absently. He was thinking more of Mona just then than of the river. He wondered if she would be at home. He could easily ride down there and find out. It wasn't far; not a quarter of a mile, but he assured himself that he wasn't going, and that he was not quite a fool, he hoped Even if she were at home, what good could that possibly do him? Just give him several bad nights, when he would lie in his corner of the tent and listen to the boys snoring with a different key for every man. Such nights were not pleasant, nor were the thoughts that caused them.
From where they were camped upon a ridge which bounded a broad coulee on the east, he could look down upon the Stevens ranch nestling in the bottomland, the house half hidden among the cottonwoods. Through the last hours of the afternoon he watched it hungrily. The big corral ran down to the water's edge, and he noted idly that three panels of the fence extended out into the river, and that the muddy water was creeping steadily up until at sundown the posts of the first panel barely showed above the water.
Park came up to him and looked down upon the little valley. "I never did see any sense in Jack Stevens building where he did," he remarked. "There ain't a June flood that don't put his corral under water, and some uh these days it's going to get the house. He was too lazy to dig a well back on high ground; he'd rather take chances on having the whole business washed off the face uh the earth."
"There must be danger of it this year if ever," Thurston observed uneasily. "The river is coming up pretty fast, it seems to me. It must have raised three feet since we crossed this afternoon."
"I'll course there's danger, with all that snow coming out uh the mountains. And like as not Jack's in Shellanne roosting on somebody's pool table and telling it scary, instead uh staying at home looking after his stuff. Where yuh going, Bud?"
"I'm going to ride down there," Thurston answered constrainedly. "The women may be all alone."
"Well, I'll go along, if you'll hold on a minute. Jack ain't got a lick uh sense. I don't care if he is Mona's brother."
"Half brother," corrected Thurston, as he swung up into the saddle. He had a poor opinion of Jack and resented even that slight relation to Mona.
The road was soggy with the rain which fell steadily; down in the bottom, the low places in the road were already under water, and the river, widening almost perceptibly in its headlong rush down the narrow valley, crept inch by inch up its low banks. When they galloped into the yard which sloped from the house gently down to the river fifty yards away, Mona's face appeared for a moment in the window. Evidently she had