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in the darkness, stalked by wolves, close to death, yet fighting back; stabbing, thrusting, fighting with the knife clutched desperately in his fist.
    This was a man I wanted for a friend, for of his kind there were too few.
    Dipping into the coulee, I rode my horse up the other side and followed the herd.
    What was it that drove the man on? Was it simply the will to live? To survive in spite of everything? Or was there some other reason? Was it hatred of those who had shot him from the saddle? The desire to live and seek revenge? Or something else?
    When I rejoined the herd Pa was working the drag with Zeb. "Milo says he's in bad shape," Pa said. "Did you see anything?" "Only that he crawled a long way last night,"
    I said.
    The cattle were strung out in a long column, all of half a mile from point to drag.
    Moving up behind them with Pa, we started bunching them a little more, but keeping them at a good pace. What we wanted now was distance between us and the Cowhouse; and also the faster we got into dry country, the better.
    Yet they were settling down, and fewer of them were trying to make a break for their home on the Cowhouse. Nor was there any sign of the Holt crowd or any of that renegade bunch. When nightfall came we had another fifteen miles behind us, and we bedded them down in the shelter of a bluff near the Colorado.
    Through dust and rain we made our way westward, and by night the cattle grazed on the short-grass plains and watered from the Colorado River of Texas. Each day with the sun's rising we were in the saddle, and we did not stop until shadows were tailing across the land.
    The rains were few. Brief showers that served only to settle the dust, but left no pools along the way. The river water ran slack, and Tap's face was drawn with worry when he saw it, but he said nothing, and neither did Pa.
    But we had staked everything on this westward move, and all of us knew what lay ahead, and we had all heard of the eighty miles of dry country across which we must take the herd.
    It was a hard, grueling business. Alkali dust whitened our faces, dusted over our clothing and our horses. Sweat streaked furrows through the dust, turning our t Our trek had taken us north further than we might need to go, because we wished to strike a known trail sooner, a trail where the difficulties, being known, could be calculated upon and planned for.
    We reached that trail below Fort Phantom Hill, and turned south and west again.
    We were followed.., we saw their dust by day, sensed the restlessness of our horses by night, and we knew they were near.
    We did not know whether they were Comanches prowling to steal ponies and take scalps, or whether they were the renegades from the banks of the Brazos and the Cowhouse.
    Tap Henry killed a buffalo, and the meat was a welcome thing. Later he killed an antelope, and reported Indian sign. The further we went, the wilder the country became.
    We were striking for Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos , used by the Comanches on their raids into Mexico. Named, it was said, for the skulls of the horses that died there after the wild runs up out of Mexico.
    Occasionally we found tracks. The old idea that an Indian always rode an unshod horse and a white man a shod one did not hold true, for Indians often stole shod horses from ranches, and the white man often enough rode an unshod pony.
    Cracked mud in the bottom of water-holes worried us. The river still had water, but it ran shallow. There had been few rains and this was spring--what would it be like in a few weeks more with the sun baking the land?
    There was almost a feeling of doom hanging over us that quieted our songs and stilled our voices. The herd was our all. On this move we had staked our futures, perhaps our lives.
    Off in the front was Tap, usually riding with Pa, guiding our way through the wild, dry country. At night we heard the wolves. By day occasionally we saw them slinking along, watching for a chance to pull down a calf.
    We