One stormy night Hilda awakened to find all about her lumbering, plunging cattle, clashing horns, yelling men and, for a few moments, cracking pistols. It seemed to her like a pandemonium—chaos—the end of the world. Later, from the safe spot under a handy mesquite where she had been placed, she dimly saw the heading back of the cattle, the milling of them round and round and, finally, their safe bedding down. Then came, thin and airy on the night wind, the broken strains of “The Sweet Bye and Bye.” Indian Joe, one of the hands hired at El Capitan, played beautifully on the mouth organ. He was riding night herd; she got snatches of the tune as he circled the quieting cattle. She fell asleep on it and waked next morning to hear the talk of Buster and a casual rider who had stopped at the camp to borrow tobacco. “Had a stampede?” suggested the stranger, as he rolled his cigarette, and Buster shook his head negligently above the broken stirrup strap he was mending. “Shucks, no. They run a little—nothin’ much,” was his notion of last night’s frightful hazards, its inhuman toil. “You’re welcome, old timer,” he nodded to the other’s thanks. “So long!” That drive, with its vicissitudes, its new, strange experiences, its open sky and measureless outlook, lay like a bright baldric across Hilda’s childhood, dividing what went before from what came after. She watched, day by day, how the boys buckled to their labors, how they faced with a laugh all the hardships of the trip, making light of the long night watches, going without sleep sometimes in emergencies till they nodded and almost fell forward in their saddles. She heard them jeer each other mercilessly for the least mistake or shortcoming, clothing their rare praise of each other in half-sarcastic terms; she believed they would have jeered a broken leg—their own or another’s. Not “be good” but “make good” was their slogan. Life was mostly a joke; a sour one or a gay one, but still a joke. The impression of unquestioning, off-hand fidelity to exacting duties, of uncomplaining bravery and good nature, was laid ineffaceably on the young spirit. The code all this contributed to build up was, inevitably, more a man’s than a woman’s.