One morning as Sundown was jogging along, engaged chiefly in watching his shadow bob up and down across the wavering bunch-grass, he saw that which appeared to be the back of a cow just over a rise.  He walked his horse to the rise and for some fantastic reason decided to rope the cow.  He swung his rope.  It fell true—­in fact, too true, for it encircled the animal’s neck and looped tight just where the neck joins the shoulders.  He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn.  At last he had mastered the knack of the thing!  Why, it was as easy as rolling pie-crust!  He was about to wonder what he was going to do next, when the cow—­which happened to be a large and active steer—­humped itself and departed for realms unknown.

With the perversity of inanimate objects the rope flipped in a loop around Sundown’s foot.  The horse bucked, just once, and Sundown was launched on a new and promising career.  The ground shot beneath him.  He clutched wildly at the bunch-grass, secured some, and took it along with him.  Chance, who always accompanied Sundown, raced alongside, enjoying the novelty of the thing.  He barked and then shot ahead, nipping at the steer’s heels, and this did not add to his master’s prospects of ultimate survival.  Sundown shouted for help when he could, which was not often.  Startled prairie-dogs disappeared in their holes as the mad trio shot past.  The steer, becoming warmed up to his work, paid little attention to direction and much to speed.  That a band of sheep were grazing ahead made no difference to the charging steer.  He plunged into the band.  Sundown dimly saw a sea of sheep surge around him and break in storm-tossed waves of wool on either side.  He heard some one shout.  Then he fainted.

When he again beheld the sun, a girl was kneeling beside him, a girl with dark, troubled eyes.  She offered him wine from a wicker jug.  He drank and felt better.

“Are you hurt badly?” she asked.

“Am—­I—­all here?” queried Sundown.

“I guess so.  You seem to be.”

“Was anybody else killed in the wreck?”

The girl smiled.  “You’re feeling better.  Let me help you to sit up.”

Sundown for the moment felt disinclined to move.  He was in fact pretty thoroughly used up.  “Say, did he win?” he queried finally.

“Who?”

“Me dog, Chance.  I got the start at first, but he kind of got ahead for a spell.”

“I don’t know.  Chance is right behind you.  He’s out of breath.”

“Huh!  Reckon I’m out more’n that.  He’s in luck this trip.”

“How did it happen?”

“That’s what I’m wonderin’, lady.  And say, would you be so kind as to tell me which way is north?”

Despite her solicitude for the recumbent Sundown, Eleanor Loring laughed.  “You are in one of the sheep-camps.  I’m Eleanor Loring.”

“Sheep-camp?  Gee Gosh!  Did you stop me?”