“Go get my horse, Cinquo!” broke in Taisie Lockhart imperatively. “Milly, pack the dishes. Come, we must get on!”
[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture. North of 36._ “WHAT ARE YOU—FRIEND OR FOE?” DEMANDS JIM NABOURS.]
THAT night the stars, indeed, almost tallied with Cinquo’s description in their pointed brilliances. The wind was nothing now, the silence, save for a few quavering coyotes, was deep and full of peace. Contentment sat on the wild bivouac. On a gentle slope well-nigh four thousand cattle were lying close packed in a vast oval, less than a fifth of a mile in extent, half that distance across on the lesser axis. Bedded on high, dry grass, in the path of the breeze, themselves full of grass and water, they lay, heads high, level with their cover, blowing and chewing, eyes closed and happy.
The fire points of the cook’s evening meal now barely showed. Afar came the faint sound of men’s voices, singing—the night watch riding slowly, two men in one direction, two in the opposite, fifty feet or so back from the bedded animals. These latter in some vague way knew they were protected. They lay and grunted dully, having ended one more day of their march toward fate.
“Ain’t that enough to make a cowman happy?” said Nabours to Del Williams, nodding toward the herd as they lolled by the fading fire. “You couldn’t kick ’em up.”
“We ain’t started yet, Jim,” said the young Texan.
“How come we ain’t? It couldn’t be much over four hunderd mile to Red River Station from Del Sol. Them cows is plumb gentle already.
“I’m going to roll in, Del. You and Dalhart better go on at midnight, I reckon. Watch the Dipper.”
Afar, at the established distance from the watchers, the tiny fire at Taisie’s tent fell flickering into absorption by the night. Taisie lay, wide-eyed, looking out through the tent front at the myriad-pointed sky. She told herself that it was the coffee taken late, but she knew that was not why she did not sleep. Or, if she slept, she wakened always with the picture before her of a ring of men, one facing her, his eyes calm, although he was being tried on the point of honor dearest to any man. It was worse than trying him for his life, she knew that. Had she, Portia, _provocateur général_, judge, jury, been just?