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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.
But if that Sue Latrop should see me and say that I was not nice, he'd begin to see, too, that it is a fact. "Riding with the boys here on the ranch, and officiating at the branding-pen, riding herd, cutting out beeves and playing the cowboy generally, has not added to my 'culchaw, that is sure. I don't know that I'd be able to 'act up' in decent society again.
On reaching the Nueces, feverish in anger, he drank sparingly, kneeling against the soft river's bank, cutting it with his horns, and matting his forehead with red mud. It was a momentous day in his life. He distinctly remembered the physical pain he had suffered once in a branding-pen, but that was nothing compared to this. Surely his years had been few and full of trouble.
Judith and Peter had been pitifully new at the game of life when the gods vouchsafed them the equivocal blessing of propinquity. Judith was but lately come from the convent at Santa Fé, and Hamilton from the university whose honors availed him little in the trailing of cattle over the range or in the sweat and tumult of the branding-pen.
His mother, however, scented with alarm a fire which was being built in the middle of the branding-pen. Several men, who seemed to be the owners, rode through the corralled cows while the cruel irons were being heated. Then the man who directed the work ordered into their saddles a number of swarthy fellows who spoke Spanish, and the work of branding commenced.
There was no trouble selecting the rider for this horse with the zebra marks. The lightest weight was Billy Edwards. This qualification gave him the preference over us all. Jack described the spot he desired to claim by an old branding-pen which had been built there when it had been part of the range. Billy had ironed up many a calf in those same pens himself.
The cows and calves were herded at the right of the plain, convenient to the branding-pen, the steers well away to the opposite side. As Peter drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little, white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard one of his associates say: "There’s nothing small about the ’H L’ except their methods."
There were many men at the work, and after all the cows and calves had been cut into a separate herd, the other cattle were turned loose. Then with great shoutings the cows were started up the river to a branding-pen several miles distant. Never during his life did the line-back calf forget that day.
Some plowed up the old branding-pen for a garden. Others cut logs for a cabin. Every one did two ordinary days' work. The getting of the logs together was the hardest. We sawed and chopped and hewed for dear life. The first few days Jack and one of the boys planted a fine big garden.
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