Right then Brite conceived his ultimate appreciation of the trail driver.

At last the wide base of the herd cleared the stream bed, leaving it like a wet plowed field. Then the remuda in orderly bunch crossed behind. Brite recognized Reddie Bayne on his spirited black mount. The lad was at home with horses. Moze, driving the chuck-wagon, passed up the road behind Brite and out on the level range.

Then the sharp point of the herd, with Texas Joe on the left and Less Holden on the right, passed out of sight over the hill. Farther down the widening wedge, two other riders performed a like guard. The rest held no stable position. They flanked the sides and flashed along the rear wherever an outcropping of unruly long-horns raised a trampling roar and a cloud of dust. Each rider appeared to have his own yell, which Brite felt assured he would learn to recognize in time. And these yells rang out like bells or shrilled aloft or pealed across the valley.

Brite watched the dashing drivers, the puffs of dust rising pink in the sunrise flush, the surging body of long-horns crowding up the slope. A forest of spear-pointed horns pierced the sky line. And when the last third of the herd got up out of the valley, on the wide slope, the effect was something to daunt even old Adam Brite. Half that number of cattle, without the wilder element, would have been more than enough to drive to Dodge. Brite realized this now. But there could not be any turning back. He wondered how many head of stock, and how many drivers, would never get to Dodge.

Brite turned away to ride to the highest ridge above the valley, from which he scanned the Trail to the south. For a trail drive what was coming behind was as important almost as what lay to the fore. To mix a herd with that of a following trail driver’s was bad business. It made extra toil and lost cattle. To his relief, the road and the range southward were barren of moving objects. A haze of dust marked where San Antonio lay. To the north the purple, rolling prairieland spread for leagues, marked in the distance by black dots and patches and dark lines of trees. It resembled an undulating sea of rosy grass. Only the unknown dim horizon held any menace.

The great herd had topped the slope below and now showed in its entirety, an arrow-headed mass assuming proper perspective. It had looked too big for the valley; here up on the range it seemed to lengthen and spread and find room. The herd began its slow, easy, grazing march northward, at the most eight or ten miles a day. In fine weather and if nothing molested the cattle, this leisurely travel was joy for the drivers. The infernal paradox of the trail driver’s life was that a herd might be driven north wholly under such comfortable circumstances, and again the journey might be fraught with terrific hardship and peril. Brite had never experienced one of the extreme adventures, such as he had heard of, but the ordinary trip had been strenuous and hazardous enough for him.

Brite caught up with the chuck-wagon and walked his horse alongside it for a while, conversing with the genial negro. From queries about the Rio Grande country and the Uvalde cattlemen, Brite progressed to interest in the quintet of riders who had brought the southern herd up.