Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1905-12-10
CHAPTER KY.

. echo to it's stampings and bel lowings, beating up simooms that choked it with thirst blinded it with dust, confounding itself on every side by the very fury of it's blind force had trailed for week. tractabie as toys in the hands of children. Little had hap pened to vary the monotony for the COW punchers that handled the herd. They grazed. guarded, watered. night herded the cattle day after day, night after night. l'asturage had been 'Sutti- cient if not abundant The creeks were running low and slimy with the ad vance of summer, but there had been sufficient water to let tile herd drink it's fill at least once q day.
 The outfit ate it's "sow belly" sola biscuit and coffee three times day and smoked its pipes, but was little shy on yarns round the campfire.
 "This were outfit don't father none,' commented the cook to the horse wrau- gler over the smoke of an early morn ing fire
 Don't lather no more than chunk of wood,' agreed the horse wrangicr.
 
 outfit like this Catch W-square men kotowing to a xxx boss, even if he is only acting foreman"
 Simpson. the origin of whose connec- tion with the xxx was rather a senSi- tive subject with that outfit, had begun to take his duties as q cattleman with grim seriousness. He was untiring ill his labors he spent long hours in the saddle he took his turn at night heri ing, though he was old for this kind of work He condemned the sheepmea with foul moUehed uenunciations. scon ed at their range rights. said the sheep question shouid be dealt with in the businesSike manner in which the In dian question had been settled.
 He was an advocate of violence-in short. a swaggering, bombastic wind bag. He talked much of his outfit" and ''his men What was good enough for them was good enough for him. he would announce at neal time in d sniveling tone. when the food happened to be particularly bad He split the temporary outfit, broHghl together for the purpose of hantll!n- the beef herd. into factions He pu, the xxx ill worse repute than it al ready enioycl-he Was. in fact the discordant spirit of the expedition. The men attended to their work sullenly Discord WAS ri The one thought they shared il. common was that of the wages that wollll come 1o them at the end of tine drive; of tAc feVcrish icy ol  chance of forget, ilIg n one long riotous evening l,!N mon tony, the hardship the lack of romr&,lery that made thS particular drive ont: ion:s to be remen bered in the mind of eve"y man who had taken part in it.
 Meanwli,2 the herd tralcG it's half mile iength to the Slaughtering pens day after day all unconscious of it's power When the steers had trailed for about fortnight the question of hndlng sufficient water for them be- gan to he q serious one. Tlle preceding winter had been unusually mild, the snowfall on the mountains averag ging less than in the recollection of the old. Pst plainsman. Summer had begun early and waxed hot and dry The earth began to wrinkle and cracked into trenches, like gaping mouths thirsty for the water that came not Such streams as had not dried shrank and crawled among the willows like samy things. that the herd, thirsty though it was from the long drives, had to be coaxed to drink from.
 Discomfort grew. The acting fore man, who was xxx man and comparative stranger to that part of the country, refused to consult with the W-square men in the outfit, who Knew every inch of the ground. The actlng foreman thought the Wetmore men looked down on him. put on dog" and, to Haunt his authority, he ordered the herd driven due west instead of sklrtlng to the north by the longer route, Where they would have had the adVantage of drinking at several creeks before crossing Green river. More over, the acting foreman was drinking hard and he insisted upon his order in spite of the Wetmore mems protesta- tions.
 The character of the country began 10 change; the soil took on the color of blood; even the omnipresent sagebrush began to fail the landscape: sun bleach. GU bones glistened on the red soil. white as ulcers; all the animal trails led back from the country into which they were proceeding; the sky, a'vivid, cloudless blue. raled as it dipped earth M"lo' 'nefe was no sign of life in all the land; even the grasshoppers had ieft It to the sun, the silence and the aesolatlon. Above the angry below of the thirsty nerd the men strained their ears again and again for this familiar sound of life, but there was nothing put the believing of the cattle. the e trampling of their hoofs and sometimes the long, squeaiing whinny of a horse as he threw back his head in seeming demand to know the justice of this thing
 Across the red rlafn snailod +,, ,,