“Miss Taisie! Miss Taisie!” she called. She got no answer. “My Lord! she done killed!” she called out to Anita.
Then arose her lamentations continuously as she lay in her drenched blankets. They two were all that remained. Even Buck was gone.
The run in a general way had headed north. A couple of miles ahead, between them and the Canadian River, lay a little boggy creek lined with thickets. Suddenly enlarged by the rain, it overflowed and made very soft footing for fifty or a hundred yards. Into this boggy trap the animals plunged in their madness. Within a few moments a third of the herd was bogged down. An inexplicable confusion took place among the others. No man could do anything here. The riders only followed such strings of cattle as they could hear farther down the stream. They all knew that when daylight came they would have their work to do in salvaging from the quagmire. Most of them tried to find their way back to camp, and those who made it sat huddled, drenched, as the weird flame-edged clouds passed on. Until dawn, they never knew there was a dead man lying in the grass on the bed ground three hundred yards from the camp, among the dead cattle and horses. Well, it was another grave; and this made the first duty of the day. They put up the third little headboard. So passed Al Pendleton. Though crippled by his gunshot wound, he had insisted on taking saddle.
Now the work of snaking out bogged cattle—the most unwelcome of all range work—must go forward along the muddy stream, hour after hour, as soon as the depressing dawn gave light for the beginning. The waters falling, some of the cattle struggled ashore as soon as they could see. Others needed but little help, a few had to be abandoned. In this work of roping and dragging, it took two men to handle a steer. As soon as one of the wild creatures got his feet he was certain to charge his rescuer. Hard work, dirty work, dangerous work; slow, utterly disheartening. But it was here to be done. Once more, slowly, a battered and begrimed cohort of broad horns began to assemble, watched by tired, muddy, cursing men.
“Sinker,” called Nabours to the boy as he came by coiling his muddy rope in the gray cold dawn, “you go on and find Dalhart, and ride back to camp. I don’t know where the rest of the horses went. Drive in what cows you find. It ain’t so far. Tell the cook we’ll be in for a little coffee, some of us, right soon.”