Once Park, passing by, smiled down upon him grimly. "Here's
where yuh get the real thing in local color," he taunted, but
Thurston was too busy to answer. The stress of living had
dimmed his eye for the picturesque.

That night, one Philip Thurston slept as sleeps the dead. But he
awoke with the others and thanked the Lord there were no more
cattle to unload and brand.

When he went out on day-herd that afternoon he fancied that he
was getting into the midst of things and taking his place with
the veterans. He would have been filled with resentment had he
suspected the truth: that Park carefully eased those first days
of his novitiate. That was why none of the night-guarding fell
to him until they had left Billings many miles behind them.



CHAPTER V

THE STORM

The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on
the middle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two.
The outfit had camped near the head of a long, shallow basin
that had a creek running through; down the winding banks of it
lay the white-tented camps of seven other trail-herds, the
cattle making great brown blotches against the green at sundown.
Thurston hoped they would all be there in the morning when the
sun came up, so that he could get a picture.