seeing the others crossing, walked cautiously up on the bridge.  It was a moment of extreme anxiety.  None of us spoke a word, but the cattle crowding off the bridge at the farther end set it vibrating.  That was enough:  they turned as if panic-stricken and rushed back to the body of the herd.  I was almost afraid to look at Jacklin.  He could scarcely speak, but he rode over to me, ashen with rage, and kept repeating, “Well, wouldn’t that beat hell!”

Slaughter rode back across the bridge, and the men came up and gathered around Jacklin.  We seemed to have run the full length of our rope.  No one even had a suggestion to offer, and if any one had had, it needed to be a plausible one to find approval, for hope seemed to have vanished.  While discussing the situation, a one-eyed, pox-marked fellow belonging to Slaughter’s outfit galloped up from the rear, and said almost breathlessly, “Say, fellows, I see a cow and calf in the herd.  Let’s rope the calf, and the cow is sure to follow.  Get the rope around the calf’s neck, and when it chokes him, he’s liable to bellow, and that will call the steers.  And if you never let up on the choking till you get on the other side of the bridge, I think it’ll work.  Let’s try it, anyhow.”

We all approved, for we knew that next to the smell of blood, nothing will stir range cattle like the bellowing of a calf.  At the mere suggestion, Jacklin’s men scattered into the herd, and within a few minutes we had a rope round the neck of the calf.  As the roper came through the herd leading the calf, the frantic mother followed, with a train of excited steers at her heels.  And as the calf was dragged bellowing across the bridge, it was followed by excited, struggling steers who never knew whether they were walking on a bridge or on terra firma.  The excitement spread through the herd, and they thickened around the entrance until it was necessary to hold them back, and only let enough pass to keep the chain unbroken.

They were nearly a half hour in crossing, for it was fully as large a herd as ours; and when the last animal had crossed, Pete Slaughter stood up in his stirrups and led the long yell.  The sun went down that day on nobody’s wrath, for Jacklin was so tickled that he offered to kill the fattest beef in his herd if we would stay overnight with him.  All three of the herds were now over, but had not this herd balked on us the evening before, over nine thousand cattle would have crossed Slaughter’s bridge the day it was built.

It was now late in the evening, and as we had to wait some little time to get our own horses, we stayed for supper.  It was dark before we set out to overtake the herd, but the trail was plain, and letting our horses take their own time, we jollied along until after midnight.  We might have missed the camp, but, by the merest chance, Priest sighted our camp-fire a mile off the trail, though it had burned to embers.  On reaching camp, we changed saddles to our night