“Why, he’ll trot like a lobo, and stretch out like a deer, and he can bound with the antelope. I tell you folks the Paintbrush has copied every runnin’ creature, and he’ll do it all for me when I have won him entirely.” CHAPTER XII DROUTH “That makes three hundred, Russ,” counted Raquel, while a wriggling leggy calf, baaing frantically for its mother, was caught in the “squeezer” as it tried to slip through the cattle chute. Russ pulled the calf out and in a moment had the little whiteface on its side in the corral. There was a smell of singeing hair, an enraged moan from the waiting mother cow and, as her baby struggled to its feet, a little Lazy L branded on its flank, she charged wildly. Everybody scattered and Georgie got under the corral fence just in time to escape a competent pair of horns. The calf looked wildly about, discovered its mother charging the world, and with a bawl butted into her side. Immediately her frenzy disappeared from the range mother. She became quiet and peaceful and loving, and began vigorously to lick her son into shape, while he healed his hurts with nourishment. “Oh, you old cow-mother you. That’s just the way I feel; peaceful and lovin’.” Raquel grinned at Russell. It was a glorious day, the first of May, although the sun was too hot for eight o’clock in the morning. “Do you know, Russ, the Lazy L cleared just sixty-five thousand dollars on that bunch of cattle we shipped two weeks ago. The market raised from fifty to sixty-five dollars a head and is still going up. If we’d sent them all off at first we’d have lost--let’s see--just nine thousand dollars. “All of that’s gone into Liberty bonds now. We’ve paid Mr. Marvin back, with interest, and the rest is in the bank for operatin’ expenses. “But the question is, where are we goin’ to get more cattle for the Government? After this next bunch we can’t ship anything but veal until September.” “I don’t know, ma’am. Cattle is gettin’ scarcer and scarcer already with this war. And if we don’t get some rain, what cattle we got left won’t be fit to put on ice.” The roundup, which was nearly complete, had totalled Los Ranchos already some twenty-five hundred calves. As a number of the great pastures of Los Ranchos were fenced the cattle were being branded in lots. The roundup proper, which takes place once a year and for one purpose only, that of branding all cattle, is a thing of the open range, where there are no fences, and cattle must be rounded up for fifty miles. There is much riding, a big outfit is necessary, and it takes longer than when it can be done by pastures. In the old days Dad would be out on the range for five and six weeks at a time, and cattle from ’way up in Colorado would have to be cut out of his herd, “drifters” that had traveled a couple of hundred miles.