"Two more days," growled an inspector. "It's time you fellers throwed this worn-out, ancient way aside, an' got up even with th' times. You can build a chute that'll hold eight head an' by usin' stampin' irons you can turn out from sixty to eighty, yes, sometimes even a hundred, an hour, after you get th' hang of it. This handful should 'a' been done by noon. If I was you, Huff," he said, turning to the Bar H foreman, "I'd get on th' jump an' make a couple of them chutes, an' lay in half a dozen irons. One iron will do two or three with one heatin'; sometimes, if th' iron handlers work fast, two irons will stamp th' whole eight. You'll laugh when you see 'em comin' out, all branded, eight to a clip; an' th' work ain't near so hard. There ain't no holdin', nor ropin', nor throwin'. Here we've toted half a dozen Question Mark irons up here, an' they ain't hardly saved us any time. You've got plenty of time to put up a chute before we start on yore thousand--if you don't, we'll be a week on 'em, an' a week's too long." His companion nodded emphatically, and offered to superintend the work. "Ridley can handle th' tallyin' for us out here. They've all been selected, an' comin' as slow as they do, it ain't no two-man job. Mebby th' Double X will lend a couple more men to help--they're finishin' a pair of chutes up there, an' know what's wanted. What you say about it?" Big Tom considered, and grudgingly gave his consent. Gus Thompson, tired as he was, volunteered to go to his ranch with the request, and started as soon as he had eaten. And by the night of the second day following, when the road-branded Triangle herd was being held to await the coming of McCullough, two eight-cow chutes were ready on the Bar H for the handling of its thousand head. The round-up on the Bar H went forward with a swing and when it came time for the road branding the chutes proved their worth. The cattle, driven up in groups of eight, were forced into the long, narrow boxes as fast as the branded group went out at the other end. A bar dropped past the nose of the leader, and another bar dropped behind the last one in. Two men standing on a platform running along the side of the chute, each was handed a freshly heated iron and hurried from animal to animal, stamping the brand on each in turn. All morning the long chutes filled and emptied, the men changing places as they tired, the iron handlers so bothered by the stinging odor of burning hair that none of them worked longer than two or three hours without being relieved. "I'm backin' this here magazine-action brandin' with a hundred an' fifty pounds of fightin' Irish," declared Reilly, chuckling at the almost automatic working of the chutes. "Eight in, stamped an' out again while we'd be workin' on one slippery cuss. Seventy th' last hour for Sam's chute, an' Fraser crowdin' him close; an' us tenderfeet at it--I'm bettin' th' last hour does ninety to th' chute. We're gettin' th' hang of it, an' gettin' it fast."