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Push 'em along all yuh can, while I go on ahead and see." With tin-cans, slickers, and much vituperation, they forced the herd up the coulee side and strung them out again on trail. The line-backed cow walked and walked in the lead before Pink's querulous gaze, and the others plodded listlessly after.

He inspected the four calves gravely, wondered audibly where Man had found them, and how the round-up came to miss them, and criticized his application of the brand; in the opinion of Polycarp, Manley either burned too deep or not deep enough. "Time that line-backed heifer scabs off, you can't tell what's on her," he asserted, expectorating solemnly before he turned away to his work.

And though the Silent One did not swear, he carried rocks in his pockets, and threw them with venomous precision at every "dog" that showed his impertinent nose out of a burrow within range. For Pink, he vented his spleen on the line-backed cow. So they walked and walked and walked. The cattle balked at another hill, and all the tincans and slickers in the crowd could scarcely move them.

Eagle Creek rode up and stopped within ten feet of the line-backed cow; she seemed hurt at being held up in this manner, Pink thought. "Yuh'll have t' turn this herd back," Eagle Creek announced bluntly. "Where to?" Pink asked, too stunned to take in the meaning of it. "T' hell, I guess. It's the only place I know of where everybody's welcome." Eagle Creek's tone was not pleasant.

He shrugged his shoulders at what that meant, and gave his attention to the herd. The marching line split at the brow of the bluff. The line-backed cow lowered her head a bit and went unfaltering down the parched, gravel-coated hill, followed by a few hundred of the freshest.

Her energy, in the face of all the dry, dreary days, rasped Pink's nerves unbearably. For nearly a week he had ridden left point, and always that line-backed cow with the down-crumpled horn walked and walked and walked, a length ahead of her most intrepid followers. He leaned from his saddle, picked up a rock from the barren, yellow hillside, and threw it at the cow spitefully.

Then a swing man one day called his foreman's attention to a stray, line-backed, bar-circle-bar steer in the herd. The foreman only gave him a passing glance, saying, "Let him alone; we may get a jug of whiskey for him if some trail cutter don't claim him before we cross Red River."

Not a man was humped listlessly in his saddle; instead, they rode with shoulders back and hats at divers jaunty angles to keep the sun from shining in eyes that faced the future cheerfully. The herd steadily climbed the ridge, choosing the smoothest path and the easiest slope. Pink assured the line-backed cow that she was a peach, and told her to "go to it, old girl."

He took off his hat, pushed back his curls dripping wet they were and flattened unbecomingly in pasty, yellow rings on his forehead and eyed with disfavor a line-backed, dry cow, with one horn tipped rakishly toward her speckled nose; she blinked silently at wind and heat, and forged steadily ahead, up-hill and down coulee, always in the lead, always walking, walking, like an automaton.

He drove a big, line-backed heifer into a corner, roped and tied her down with surprising dexterity, and turned impatiently. "Come! Isn't that iron ready yet?" Val, on the other side of the fence, drew it out and inspected it indifferently. "It is not, Mr. Fleetwood. If you are in a very great hurry, why not apply your temper to it and a few choice remarks?"