weed or hunting worms and bugs for their nestful of gaping mouths; with gophers trailing snakily through the tall grasses; and out in the barren centre where the yellow earth was pimpled with little mounds, plump-bodied prairie dogs sitting pertly upon their stubby tails the while they chittered shrewishly at the world; and over all a lazy, smiling sky with clouds always drifting and trailing shadows across the prairie-dog towns and the coulee and the creek, and a soft wind stirring the grasses.

Then the prairie dogs would stand a-tiptoe to listen.  The meadowlarks would stop their singing—­even the trailing shadows would seem to waver uncertainly—­and only the creek would go gurgling on, uncaring.  Around a bend would rattle the wagons of the Double-Crank, with a lone rider trotting before to point the way; down to the very bank of the uncaring creek they would go.  There would be hurrying to and fro with much clamor of wood-chopping, tent-raising and all the little man-made noises of camp life and cooking.  There would be the added clamor of the cavvy, and later, of tired riders galloping heavily into the coulee, and of many voices upraised in full-toned talk with now and then a burst of laughter.

All these things, and the prairie folk huddled trembling in their homes, a mute agony of fear racking their small bodies.  Only the creek and the lazy, wide-mouthed coulee and the trailing clouds and the soft wind seemed not to mind.

Came another sunrise and with it the clamor, the voices, the rattle of riding gear, the trampling.  Then a final burst and rattle, a dying of sounds in the distance, a silence as the round-up swept on over the range-land, miles away to the next camping place.  Then the little prairie folk—­the gopher, the plump-bodied prairie dogs, the mice and the rabbits, would listen long before they crept timidly out to sniff suspiciously the still-tainted air and inspect curiously and with instinctive aversion the strange marks left on the earth to show that it was all something more than a horrible nightmare.

So, under cloud and sun, when the wind blew soft and when it raved over the shrinking land, when the cold rain drove men into their yellow slickers and set horses to humping backs and turning tail to the drive of it and one heard the cook muttering profanity because the wood was wet and the water ran down the stovepipe and hungry men must wait because the stove would not “draw,” the Double-Crank raked the range.  Horses grew lean and ill-fitting saddles worked their wicked will upon backs that shrank to their touch of a morning.  Wild range cattle were herded, a scared bunch of restlessness, during long, hot forenoons, or longer, hotter afternoons, while calves that had known no misfortune beyond a wet back or a searching wind learned, panic-stricken, the agony of capture and rough handling and tight-drawn ropes and, last and worst, the terrible, searing iron.