“There’s nothing small about the ‘H L’ except their methods.”

“What’s ‘H L’ stand for, anyway?” the other cow-puncher asked.

“Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether you’re with ’em or again ’em.”

Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out.  He fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a choice of meanings for the “H L”—­and yet he could not have known that Peter had gone to Rodney’s cabin last night.  He flung himself heart and soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight.  Calves bleated piteously as they were jammed in the thickening pack.  Peter shouted, swung the rope right and left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed by a calf.  These were turned over to cow-boys waiting for them.  Time after time Hamilton returned to that mass of unconscious power, that with a single rush could have annihilated the little band of horsemen that handled them with the skill of a dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.

To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very ecstasy of impotent fury.  Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers.  Their long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note.  Horns, hoofs, tails beat the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round and round them on ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.

The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion worse confounded.  Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle.  The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done.  A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on the prone animal.

The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and mingled with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound.  The yells of the cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in hand, were all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus of fear, rage, and pain.  And still the work of sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on.  Though an outsider would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a counting-house.  One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap.  In a second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse.  He limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse.  The beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes almost human in their pain.