Through the early morning hours the branding continued, and the bleating of the cattle told of the hot stamping irons indelibly burning the sign of the Bar-20 on the tender hides of calves. Mother cows fought and plunged and called in reply to the terrified bawling of their offspring, and sympathetically licked the burns when the frightened calves had been allowed to join them. Cowboys were deftly roping calves by their hind legs and dragging them to the fires of the branding men. Two men would hold a calf, one doubling the foreleg back on itself at the knee and the other, planting one booted foot against the calf's under hind leg close to its body, pulled back on the other leg while his companion, who held the foreleg, rested on the animal's head. The third man, drawing the hot iron from the fire, raised and held it suspended for a second over the calf's flank, and then there was an odor and a puff of smoke; and the calf was branded with a mark which neither water nor age would wipe out. Pete Wilson came riding up dragging a calf at the end of his rope, and turned the captive over to Billy Williams and his two helpers, none of them paying any attention to the cow which followed a short distance behind him. Lanky seized the unfortunate calf and leaned over to secure the belly hold, when someone shouted a warning and he dropped the struggling animal and leaped back and to one side as the mother charged past. Wheeling to return the attack, the cow suddenly flopped over and struck the earth with a thud as Buck's rope went home. He dragged her away and then releasing her, chased her back into the herd. "_Hi!_ Get that little devil!" shouted Billy to Hopalong, pointing to the fleeing calf. "Why didn't you watch for her, you half-breed!" demanded the indignant Lanky of Pete. "Do you think this is a ten-pin alley!" Hopalong came riding up with the calf, which swiftly became recorded property. "Bar-20; tally one," sang out the monotonous voice of the tally-man. "Why didn't you grab her when she went by, Lanky?" he asked, putting a new point on his pencil. "Hope th' next one heads yore way!" retorted Lanky, grinning. "Won't. I ain't abusin' th' kids." "Bar-20; tally one," droned a voice at the next fire. All was noise, laughter, dust, and a seeming confusion, but every man knew his work thoroughly and was doing it in a methodical way, and the confusion was confined to the victims and their mothers.