rodeo in September, there is little for the riders to do. The cattle
roam free on the open ranges, while calves grow into yearlings,
yearlings become two-year-olds, and two-year-olds mature for the market.
On the Cross-Triangle and similar ranches, three or four of the steadier
year-round hands only are held. These repair and build fences, visit the
watering places, brand an occasional calf that somehow has managed to
escape the dragnet of the rodeo, and with "dope bottle" ever at hand
doctor such animals as are afflicted with screwworms. It is during these
weeks, too, that the horses are broken; for, with the hard and dangerous
work of the fall and spring months, there is always need for fresh
mounts.

The horses of the Cross-Triangle were never permitted to run on the open
range. Because the leaders of the numerous bands of wild horses that
roamed over the country about Granite Mountain were always ambitious to
gain recruits for their harems from their civilized neighbors, the
freedom of the ranch horses was limited by the fences of a
four-thousand-acre pasture. But within these miles of barbed wire
boundaries the brood mares with their growing progeny lived as free and
untamed as their wild cousins on the unfenced lands about them. The
colts, except for one painful experience, when they were roped and
branded, from the day of their birth until they were ready to be broken
were never handled.

On the morning following his meeting with the stranger on the Divide
Phil Acton, with two of his cowboy helpers, rode out to the big pasture
to bring in the band.

The owner of the Cross-Triangle always declared that Phil was intimately
acquainted with every individual horse and head of stock between the