TOM had ridden out ahead of the outfit at his own re quest. He had slept very little, and the call to roll out at dawn the next morning found him with his decision made. While the majority of the L. D. cattle grazed in summer around or near the salt licks in the mountains, a wild bunch of almost a hundred had drifted over toward Elk Butte, and Tom's proposition to Jake that early morning was that he go and get them.
"By yourself?"
"I figured on going alone."
"You won't get much sleep."
"I wasn't figuring to sleep," said Tom simply, and waited.
Jake agreed. He felt that it was to be his last round-up for the L. D., and he was late as it was. It would be two more days before the wagons and the outfit could start, and at any time now the weather would break again and the winter come to stay. Already the slopes of the foothills were painted with mahogany splotches where the chokecherry bushes had turned, and the ducks were coming in from the North, looking for their old halting places of reservoir and pool. And although the sun was shining that morning, low-lying white clouds, like banks of thick fog, filled the mountain cañons and hid the summits of the peaks. The early autumn of the high country was close at hand.
"All right," he said. "I suppose you know the family's going?"
"I guess I can bear up under it."
The swagger in his walk as he left was for Jake's benefit, and so Jake understood it. So also was the noisy cheerfulness with which he roped out and packed a buckskin horse and saddled the Miller.
