"Needn't hurry with that bed, Johnny," he said in an undertone. "You move the wagon to Preisser Lake this mornin'. Besides, you may want to hold something out of your bed. You're to slip away after dinner and edge over towards Hillsboro. Help Hiram bring his cattle back when he gets ready. Tell him we'll be round Aleman all this week, so he might better come back through MacCleod's Pass. I don't know within fifty mile where the John Cross wagon is." Johnny nodded, abandoning his bed making. "_Bueno, señor!_" He took a pair of leather chaparejos from the bed, regarded them doubtfully and threw them back. "Guess I won't take the chaps. Don't need them much except on the river work, in the mesquite; and they're so cussed, all-fired hot." "Say, John, you won't need your mount, I reckon. Just take one horse. Lot of our runaway horses in the John Cross pasture. You can ride them--and take your pick for your mount when you come back. That's all. Road from Upham goes straight west through the mountains. Once you pass the summit you see your own country." "Got you," said Johnny. He went hotfoot to the wagon, grabbed a tin washbasin, held it under the water-barrel faucet and made a spluttering toilet--first man, since he had not rolled his bed. The bobtail rode off at a laughing gallop. Daylight grew. The horse herd drew near with a soft drumming of trotting feet in the sand. Johnny rustled tools from the stacked tin plates and cups; he stabbed a mighty beefsteak with his iron fork; he added hot sour-dough biscuit, a big spoonful of hot canned corn; he poured himself a cup of hot black coffee, sat down on one of his own feet in the sand, and became a busy man. Others joined that business. The last guard came in; the chattering circle round the fire grew with surprising swiftness. Each, as he finished, carried cup, plate and iron cutlery to the huge dishpan by the chuck box, turned his night horse loose, and strode off to the horse herd, making a noose in his rope. They made a circle round the big horse herd, a rope from each to each by way of a corral on three sides of it; night wrangler and day wrangler, mounted, holding down the fourth side. Grumbling dayherders caught their horses, saddled with miraculous swiftness and departed to take over the herd. The bobtail was back before the roping out of horses was completed. While the bobtail roped out their horses, Johnny and the two wranglers lured out the four big brown mules for the chuck wagon and the two small brown mules for the bed wagon, tied them to convenient soapweeds and hung a nose bag full of corn on each willing brown head. Last of all the horse wrangler caught his horse. The night wrangler was to ride the bed wagon, so he needed no horse.