It was not yet light next morning when Jack heard the bustle which announced that all hands were astir, and he at once got up and dressed, to find himself only just in time for breakfast. It was plain daylight by the time the meal was over, and most of the men at once went down to the corrals. Jack hurried down to the hen-house, but, on looking at his ducks' eggs, found that only a part of one setting had hatched, and putting a little food near the hen's nest, he left them, determining to postpone the building of his coop until the following day. He went on down to the corral and found that the men were busy turning out the horses on to the prairie, where they were to be herded by two riders. Some of the men had brought wood to the big round corral, and just outside it, and close to the fence, some were kindling fires, while others were chopping poles and logs into wood small enough to be used on these fires. A great lot of iron bars, four or five feet long, stood against the corral fence, and on looking closely at these, Jack saw that each had a handle on one end and an iron letter on the other. These, he supposed, must be the branding irons, and these fires were for heating them. After a time most of the horses had been turned out, but a large number, almost all of them old mares, with their colts, had been cut out and confined in a series of pens that were connected by a gate with the round corral, outside which the fires were burning. By the time these were going well, and the various branding irons had been put in them to heat, three or four of the men drove into the big corral a bunch of thirty or forty mares, whose little colts stayed close by their sides. Many of these mares seemed quite wild, and all raced around the walls of the pen, as if very much frightened. It seemed to Jack as if these little colts, some of which hardly looked bigger than jack rabbits, must all be killed by being stepped on. Yet each colt kept close to its own mother's side, and a little bit under her, so that it was well protected from being harmed by any other mare that crowded close upon it.