“You wanta shake a leg to-day, old fellow, and throw dust in that tinhorn’s face,” he murmured to his four-footed friend, gentling it with little pats of love and admiration.  “Adios, Chiquito.  I know you won’t throw off on yore old pal.  So long, old pie-eater.”

Across the mesa Dave galloped back, swung from the saddle, and made a bee-line for breakfast.  The other men were already busy at this important business.  From the tail of the chuck wagon he took a tin cup and a tin plate.  He helped himself to coffee, soda biscuits, and a strip of steak just forked from a large kettle of boiling lard.  Presently more coffee, more biscuits, and more steak went the way of the first helping.  The hard-riding life of the desert stimulates a healthy appetite.

The punchers of the D Bar Lazy R were moving a large herd to a new range.  It was made up of several lots bought from smaller outfits that had gone out of business under the pressure of falling prices, short grass, and the activity of rustlers.  The cattle had been loose-bedded in a gulch close at hand, the upper end of which was sealed by an impassable cliff.  Many such canons in the wilder part of the mountains, fenced across the face to serve as a corral, had been used by rustlers as caches into which to drift their stolen stock.  This one had no doubt more than once played such a part in days past.

Expertly the riders threw the cattle back to the mesa and moved them forward.  Among the bunch one could find the T Anchor brand, the Circle Cross, the Diamond Tail, and the X-Z, scattered among the cows burned with the D Bar Lazy R, which was the original brand of the owner, Emerson Crawford.

The sun rose and filled the sky.  In a heavy cloud of dust the cattle trailed steadily toward the distant hills.

Near noon Buck, passing Dave where he rode as drag driver in the wake of the herd, shouted a greeting at the young man.  “Tur’ble hot.  I’m spittin’ cotton.”

Dave nodded.  His eyes were red and sore from the alkali dust, his throat dry as a lime kiln.  “You done, said it, Buck.  Hotter ’n hell or Yuma.”

“Dug says for us to throw off at Seven-Mile Hole.”

“I won’t make no holler at that.”

The herd leaders, reading the signs of a spring close at hand, quickened the pace.  With necks outstretched, bawling loudly, they hurried forward.  Forty-eight hours ago they had last satisfied their thirst.  Usually Doble watered each noon, but the desert yesterday had been dry as Sahara.  Only such moisture was available as could be found in black grama and needle grass.

The point of the herd swung in toward the cottonwoods that straggled down from the draw.  For hours the riders were kept busy moving forward the cattle that had been watered and holding back the pressure of thirsty animals.

Again the outfit took the desert trail.  Heat waves played on the sand.  Vegetation grew scant except for patches of cholla and mesquite, a sand-cherry bush here and there, occasionally a clump of shining poison ivy.