feet, and balked at the ordeal. Others straggled up, bunched against the
rebels, and stood stolidly where they were.

Pink galloped on down the crawling line. "Forward, the Standard Oil
Brigade!" he yelled whimsically as he went.

The cowboys heard--and understood. They left their places and went forward
at a lope, and Pink rode back to the coulee edge, untying his slicker as he
went. The Silent One was already off his horse and shouting hoarsely as he
whacked with his slicker at the sulky mass. Pink rode in and did the same.
It was not the first time this thing had happened, and from a diversion it
was verging closely on the monotonous. Presently, even a rank tenderfoot
must have caught the significance of Pink's military expression. The
Standard Oil Brigade was at the front in force.

Cowboys, swinging five-gallon oil-cans, picked up from scattered sheep camps
and carried many a weary mile for just such an emergency, were charging the
bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles
inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till
their arms ached. Anything, everything that would make a din and startle the
cattle out of their lethargy, was pressed into service.

But they might have been raised in a barnyard and fed cabbage leaves from
back door-steps, for all the excitement they showed. Cattle that three
months ago--or a month--would run, head and tail high in air, at sight of a
man on foot, backed away from a rattling, banging cube of gleaming tin,
turned and faced the thing dull-eyed and apathetic.

In time, however, they gave way dogedly before the onslaught. A few were
forced shrinkingly down the hill; others followed gingerly, until the line