Back of this cart marched, saddled and bridled, a singular horse, beautiful of head and crest, its dark yellow body coat broken by white markings, a broad band of white from side to side across its hips.
In the vanguard of the herd proper marched a great gaunt steer, a giant in stature, long of limb and wide of horn, a yellow dun in color. It now was coming on with a rapid sidewise shuffle, not dissimilar to the fox trot of a Southern riding horse, alertly looking from side to side. Back of him the wide sea of other longhorns showed, tossing in the dust. It might all have been some circus caravan, so wholly out of human experience it all seemed to the observers.
At the points of the herd rode two stalwart men, one at either side, men who never looked at one another. Back of them at long intervals, every four or five hundred cattle, came the swing men; and at last the dust of the drag—the weak, the maimed and the halt. Back of these yet again showed the darker colors of the remuda—some scores of horses easily handled by a ragged, thin-shouldered, tallow-faced boy, who wore the only pair of _chaparajos_ in the company, for sake of trousers no longer fit to see.
In all their lives these Texas cattle never had seen a town even so great as embryonic Abilene. It took a quarter of an hour to get them to enter the cross street. As McCoyne had admitted that the new corrals would hold only a fraction of the cattle, it was the new intention to drive through the town and hold the herd a mile or two to the north; Nabours himself assenting thus much to the idea of a triumphal entry merely to oblige his guide. He rode back to the lead cart and leaned over.
“For God’s sake, Miss Taisie, get on Blancocito and ride in front, why don’t you? Get on your own horse and ride in front of your own cows.”
But Taisie was not for triumphal entry. She stood out for closed curtains on her cart. Through a narrow crack she gazed out. There were countless men, but not a single woman.
Once headed for the cross street and crowned up by the riders, the head of the herd, with much clacking of horns and cracking of hoofs, advanced until it came opposite the gallery of the Drovers’ Cottage. Now came climax in welcome. Here the town band of Abilene lay in ambush.