When McMasters walked his horse down the long street of Austin town, rifle under leg, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, though well aware of the scrutiny which followed him from more than one door and window. The reputation of the mysterious, always restless sheriff of Gonzales, captain of the newly revived state constabulary, was one that reached beyond the confines of his own county. No one had looked for him in Austin—to the contrary. But then, as one man said to a neighbor, McMasters, of Gonzales, could always be counted on to be doing some unaccountable thing. CHAPTER XV NORTHWARD HO! THE reconstructed and augmented Del Sol herd passed on northward steadily, as though impelled by some cosmic force. It had required well-nigh a week to cut the two herds and blend them into one, for handling heavy beeves in the open is vastly different from the work of the corral and branding chute on light cattle. At the end of the work the remuda was dragged and drooping, the men yet more taciturn. But they could look out with pride over well-nigh four thousand head of longhorns such as would make any cowman’s eye brighten even in that day. Now, daily more accustomed to the trail, the cattle shook down to the daily march. At dawn they did not feed at first; but, never urged to speed, in an hour or two would graze along, halting in the march, advancing, the concourse at times stretched out over more than a mile, perhaps a quarter that distance in width. At midday, thrown off the trail—if trail it could be called which as yet had never known a herd—they grazed well, and in that portion of the country could find water two or three times a day; so that they took on or held flesh rather than lost it. “Did ary one of you-all ever hear how far it is to Aberlene?” asked Nabours of his new man, Dalhart, whom he had put on point in view of his obvious education as a cowman. “Must be e’en around about a plumb thousand miles,” replied the latter. “Hope hit’s thisaway all the ways—plenty of grass and the rivers full enough fer water right along. We ain’t had to hunt water yet. You’d orto see the Llano! We’ve driv two days, out yan, with their tongues hangin’ out. “Water! When we hit the Colorado I thought we got plenty water. She’ll swim a horse in a dry year, and she swum us for more’n a hundred fifty yards! I was mighty glad to ferry them carts.