CHAPTER 17

AUGUSTUS RODE BACK to camp a little after sunset, thinking the work would have stopped by then. The cattle were being

held in a long valley near the river, some five miles from town. Every night Call went across the river with five or six hands

and came back with two or three hundred Mexican cattle—longhorns mostly, skinny as rails and wild as deer. Whatever

they got they branded the next day, with the part of the crew that had rested doing the hard end of the work. Only Call

worked both shifts. If he slept, it was an hour or two before breakfast or after supper. The rest of the time he worked, and

so far as anyone could tell the pace agreed with him. He had taken to riding the Hell Bitch two days out of three, and the

mare seemed no more affected by the work than he was.

Bolivar had not taken kindly to being moved to a straggly camp out in the brush, with no dinner bell to whack or crowbar

to whack it with. He kept his ten-gauge n