The only men who can stand the monotony of day-herding are those who are not overburdened with brains, and so have the ability to turn off the thinking-machine entirely until they need it again. Smoking helps, and singing long-drawn songs; but Bowles turned back to Wordsworth, the poet of nature. Stray snatches of poems and sonnets rose in his mind, and he tried to piece out the rest; then he gazed at the quivering mirage, the plain, the straying cattle, and wondered how Wordsworth would see it. He was engaged in this peaceful occupation when, on the second day, he noted a moving figure, far away; dreamily he watched it as it emerged from the barbed-wire lanes of the nesters, and then, like a flash, the words of Brigham came back to him: "I knowed her four miles away by section lines." It was Dixie Lee, and she was coming his way! There were three other worthless cowboys like himself on the day-herd, and they had seen her already. Like Brigham, they knew her by the way she rode, miles and miles away. Steadily she pounded along, keeping the rangy bay at an even lope, and then she turned toward the ranch. The long wire fence of the horse pasture had thrown her from her course, but now she was on the barren prairie and could skirt the north fence home. A series of muttered comments marked this sudden turn to the west, and the tall, cigarette-smoking youth who had been rubbing the sleep from his eyes lopped down beneath his salt-bush again. But he had returned to Morpheus too soon, for almost immediately after he had laid his hat over his eyes the distant rider changed her course, and the boys held up their hands for silence. Dixie Lee was going to make them a visit, after all, and they would let her catch him asleep. Swiftly the tireless bay came loping across the flats, winding in and out to dodge the dog towns, and soon the queen of the cowboys was up to the edge of the herd. "Hello, Uncle Joe!" she hailed, riding over toward the old-timer. "How's your head?" "All right, Miss Dix," replied the puncher amiably. "Cain't hurt a cowboy in the haid, you know." "No, but you can spoil his looks, Uncle," retorted Dixie May playfully. "You want to remember that--I heard a lady down here inquiring for you mighty special. What's the matter with Slim over there?" A whoop went up at this, and the sleeper sat up guiltily. "Oh, him?" queried Uncle Joe, speaking loud so that all could hear. "W'y, kinder overcome by the heat, I reckon. He gits took that way every once in a while." "Ever since he begin settin' up with that nester girl!" put in the other day-herder, with a guffaw; and Dixie May began to chuckle with laughter as she rode around the herd. "Well, it's too bad about him," she called back. "I'll have to go over there and see if he's likely to die."