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Dashing cold water into their faces from a basin beside the water-barrel, they drank copiously of the coffee which Parenthesis poured out for them. "Mostly all the boys are in now, ain't they?" asked Parenthesis, looking about the group. "Yep," answered Sage-brush, "we'll finish brandin' the calves to-day. I reckon Fresno will have to take charge of the drive.
But he's yours now, fer I give him to you." "Much obliged, Belllounds. I sure do appreciate that," replied Moore, warmly. "It's what anybody'd gamble Bill Belllounds would do." "Ahuh! An' I'd take it as a favor if you'd stay on to-day an' get thet brandin' done:" "All right, I'll do that for you," replied Moore. "Lem, I guess you won't get your sleep till to-night. Come on."
Bill, me cobber, 'e comes an' tells me 'e was in Cairo wid me. I tells 'im 'e needn't tell me that. 'Anyhow, if yer was, I says, 'wy didn't yer stop 'em brandin' me? Nice feller you are to call yerself me cobber? "'Oh, he says, 'I did me best, but you wasn't havin' any. You threatens to hit me over the 'ead if I don't go stop shovin' me opinions in w'ere they wasn't wanted.
"There's just one thing more I wad like ta say to ye." The sergeant major's tendency to Doric was more noticeable in his moments of deeper feeling, "but it's something for you lads to give heed ta. When ye were scrammlin' up yonder, like a lot o' mavericks at a brandin', and yowlin' like a bunch o' coyotes, there was one man in the regiment who could laugh.
I was in work up to my eyes, an' sort o' lost track of the doin's except when Barbie would have the buckboard hooked up an' come out to the brandin' ground. The weather was glorious, an' you couldn't have blamed an Injun idol for fallin' in love, so I lost heart an' was two-thirds mad nine-tenths o' the time. Jabez had had a hard siege of it an' it showed.
Saunders gestured toward the cañon behind Gophertown. The saloon-keeper shook his head. "Don't think most of our boys will be back this week. Brandin' that bunch of new stock. Takes time to do it right." "Well, here comes Parks and Santa Fé Smith," said Saunders. "That makes four of us." "Mebby and mebby not," said the saloon-keeper. "That depends.
"Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley," said the girl quietly, "an' th' breed ain't dyin' out as I can see. Th' settlers need a new leader now that Jim Last's gone." And she fell to playing absently with her fork upon the cloth. The boys changed the subject hurriedly. "I found a dead brandin' fire in th' Cup Rim yesterday, Burt," said Masters, "quite a scrabbled space around it.
There were found annotations of this sort: "By reason of his audacity he is one of the most important of the royalists," "Last December he took a passport at Rouen for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he was called by business," "His host at Saint-Germain, Brandin de Saint-Laurent, declares that he did not sleep there regularly, sometimes two, sometimes three days at a time."
Little Jim wrinkled his nose and sniffed. "Them things you put in the stove smell just like brandin' a critter," he said, gesturing toward the kitchen. Big Jim gazed hard at his young son. Then he smiled to himself, and shook his head. "Just like brandin' a critter," he repeated, half to himself. "Just like brandin' a critter."
"But, as I'm sayin'; about this Watkins over on the Eagle Claw: Thar's a half-dozen of us a floatin' outfit we be, ridin' the range, pickin' up what calves misses the spring brandin' an' we're bringin' along mebby three hundred cows an' half-grown calves, an' headin' for the bar-B-eight that's Enright's brand corral to mark the calves. It's late in August, jest at the beginnin' of the rains.
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