"Whoa, haw, Brownie," but not too loud at first; just an encouraging word or two, and then string 'em out. My leaders are light of feet and built like running horses. The pointers--or middle yokes--come in reluctantly, but I attend to that, and with the butt end of my stock, jab the near wheeler in the ribs, and away we go. But, old pard, inside of three minutes my strip of green is gone! In its place is the quivering, broiling sun over the yellow bunch-grass; the ashen stalks of the sage seem never to have had a drop of sap in them--everything is dead. Even the jack-rabbit that stops for a look seems bedraggled and forlorn, but I whistle, pick up a moss agate, throw it in my jockey box, and jog along, for the surface is now hard as a stone, though off ahead there I will unwind my lash and send its stinging thongs to the backs of my noble beasts, touching only selected spots where the hair has been worn away until the surface looks like the head of the drum in a village band. Yes, I know they used to think us bullwhackers were brutes, but they (an occasional tenderfoot) only saw the surface. They had never been initiated; they didn't know the secrets. It was only when the load just had to be yanked to the top without doubling teams or dropping trailers, that we used the undercut which sent the long V-shaped popper upon the tender spots of the belly, and then, Pard, the thing looked worse because the Comanche-like language we hurled with it was so unusual to ears that had been trained east of the Missouri River. It sure was picturesque language! But we were all day reaching that green belt strung like a ribbon across the face of central Wyoming, and from the time we first hove in sight of it, until we pulled the pins from the steamy yokes, and dropped the hickory bows at our feet, it appeared and disappeared so often that I wonder that both man and beast did not go mad. However, inasmuch as this was a daily programme for me for several years, I know that man can stand a whole lot of hardship, if he only thinks so.