train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where
the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of
pounding surf in the distance.

Thurston--quite a different Thurston from the trim, pale young
man who had followed the lure of the West two weeks before--drew
a long breath and looked out over the hurrying waters of the
Yellowstone. It was good to be alive and young, and to live the
tented life of the plains; it was good even to be "speeding
fleetly where the grassland meets the sky "--for two weeks in the
saddle had changed considerably his view-point. He turned again
to the dust and roar of the stockyards a mile or so away.

"Perhaps," he remarked hopefully, "the next train will be ours."
Strange how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions
and new aims. He had come West to look upon the life from the
outside, and now his chief thought was of the coming steers,
which he referred to unblushingly as "our cattle." Such is the
spell of the range.

"Let's ride on over, Bud," Park proposed. "That's likely the
Circle Bar shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours
does, and I want to see how they stack up."

Thurston agreed and went to saddle up. He had mastered the art
of saddling and could, on lucky days and when he was in what he
called "form," rope the horse he wanted; to say nothing of the
times when his loop settled unexpectedly over the wrong victim.
Park Holloway, for instance, who once got it neatly under his
chin, much to his disgust and the astonishment of Thurston.