“’Twould serve ’em right if they did get wiped out once in a while,” growled Yank, who evidently was as narrow-minded as his eyes indicated. “That psalm-singin’ old whiskers has too many notions. No swearin’, no drinkin’ no bull skinnin’, no fightin’, every man read the Bible an’ lay up on Sunday! An outfit can’t do freightin’ on these plains an’ follow any such rules as those.” “See here,” bade Charley, sternly. He was a gritty little chap. “You’re new amongst us, my man, and I’ll warn you that when you speak to us of Mr. Majors or Mr. Russell or Mr. Waddell either, you want to do it civilly. They may have their peculiar notions of how to run a bull outfit, but I notice they’ve made good already with about twenty million pounds of Government freight, and that’s a pretty big contract. They’re a firm whose word is equal to a United States banknote; and there’s not a man who ever worked for them that won’t stick up for Russell, Majors & Waddell. A kinder man than Mr. Majors never lived; and if he tries to spread a little Christianity along the trail all the more credit to him, and all the better for the rest of us. We need some of that out here. The fact is a Russell, Majors & Waddell bull train is the best on the trail, besides being decent.” “Well,” rapped Yank, “as long as I do the work I’m hired to do I’ll allow no man to tell me how to act. When I signed that pledge for the whiskers outfit I didn’t mean to keep it an’ I sha’n’t if I don’t choose.” He stalked off; they gazed after――Charley with a keen glint in his gray eyes. “There’s a man” spoke Henry the mess cook, “who’ll take it out on animals when he gets mad. He’s just mean enough.” “He’ll not take it out on my team,” remarked Joel, quietly. “I don’t whip my bulls.” “No, nor on mine,” asserted Henry. “Anybody who thinks he has to beat bulls to drive them doesn’t know how to drive,” added Charley. That night they all slept on the ground under blankets and quilts and buffalo robes; many of the men slept beneath their wagons. The neck-yokes of the oxen, with an overcoat folded into the hollow of the curve in them, made comfortable pillows. At least so Davy found his when, to be a veteran bull whacker, he borrowed a yoke and tried. Two men at a time night-herded the cattle. Davy, being an “extra,” did not go on herd yet. The mess cooks were up at dawn preparing breakfast; and speedily the collection of little camps was astir. The men called back and forth, washed at the nearby creek, brought water in buckets, and what fuel they found, and were ready for breakfast when breakfast was ready for them. The company, Davy learned, furnished everything, even to the gunny sacking in which buffalo chips and bull chips were gathered; everything except the men’s revolvers. These the men owned.