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The noon meal on the round-up was served whenever the first circle was completed. The men fell ravenously on the hot meal, changed to fresh circle horses and started again. It was falling dusk when the herd gathered in the third circle had been worked and the last calf branded for the day. The men had unsaddled and spread their bed rolls before Waddles had announced the meal.
Near the boat landing is the club house, set up on piling, with a veranda across the front. The rest of High Bar is only a few acres of sedge and marsh. "Yea-uh!" says the native. "Must be somebody thar. Door's open. Yea-uh! Thar's old Lem Robbins, who allus does the cookin'. Hey, Lem!" Lem waves cordial and waddles down to meet us.
The four that pulled the wagon had settled to a steady gait and when some three miles below the Three Bar Waddles wheeled to the right and angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling country that showed not even a wagon track.
He is a poem of grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow whole; his tongue so small that he has no voice, but only a harsh klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle.
On his feet he wears a pair of enormous leather boots with pointed toes. These are always many sizes too large, for as the weather grows colder he pads them out with heavy socks of wool or fur. It is nearly impossible for him to walk in this ungainly footgear, and he waddles along exactly like a duck.
From the window, his big face red and dripping from the heat, Waddles pumped a rifle and covered Harris's flight as best he could, drilling the center of every sage that shook or quivered back of the house. Two men turned their attention to the one who handicapped their chances of locating the crawling man and poured their fire through the window.
Ill-fortune attended the Waddles in their western home. To be sure, they had their rich, broad acres, with never a stone or a stump to hinder the smooth cutting plow, but a frightful midsummer storm in the second year literally wiped out crops and cattle, and left them with their bare lives in their lowly sod house. "Drought first year, tornado second.
The next morning we were up with the dawn and started by eight to run down Mountain Billy, the grey wolf who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad Lands. Our outfit was as symmetrical as a pine cone; dogs, horses, mess wagon, food, guns and men. All we needed was the grey wolf. I was the only woman in the party, and, like "Weary Waddles," tagged behind.
Billie was running to the brush at the spot where Harris had disappeared. He rose to meet her. "Cal, you're not hurt?" she asked. "Not a scratch," he said. "Thanks to you." In her relief she grasped his arm and gave it a fierce little squeeze. "Then it's all right," she said. Waddles burst from the door of the burning house, his arms piled high with salvage.
We talk with the foreman and make nuisances of ourselves generally, and presently old man Ayers, who runs the paper, waddles in with another item to be set.
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