The men swung to their saddles and followed the wagon at a shuffling trot. From where she rode between Evans and Harris, the girl turned in her saddle and watched two men throw open the gates of the big corral where the remuda was held. The wrangler, whose duty it was to tend the horse herd by day, and the nighthawk who would guard it at night sat on their horses at the far end of the corral and urged the herd out as the gates swung back. The remuda streamed down the valley, the two first riders swinging wide to either flank while the nighthawk and wrangler brought up the rear. The four that pulled the wagon had settled to a steady gait and when some three miles below the Three Bar Waddles wheeled to the right and angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling country that showed not even a wagon track. The big cook unerringly picked the route of least resistance to the point from which the first circle would be launched, striking every wash and coulee at a place where a crossing was possible. Shortly before noon the wagon was halted in a broad bottom threaded by a tiny spring-fed stream. The teams were unhitched; mounts were unsaddled and thrown into the horse herd, which was then headed into the mouth of a branching draw and allowed to graze. Waddles dumped off the bed rolls that were piled from the broad lowered tail-gate to the wagon top and each man sorted out his own and spread it upon some spot which struck him as a likely bed ground. One man carried water from the stream. Two others snaked in wood for the chuck-wagon fire. Still another drove long stakes in the shape of a hollow square, stretching a single rope from one to the next and fashioning a frail rope corral. Harris and Evans took three poles that were slung under the wagon, looped the top-rope of a little teepee round the small ends of them and erected the three, tripod fashion, after having first pegged down the teepee sides. Harris brought the girl's bed roll and war bag from the wagon and placed them inside. "There's your house," he said. "All ready to move in." The men repaired to the creek bank and splashed faces and hands. The big voice of the cook bellowed angrily from the wagon. "Downstream! Downstream!" he boomed. "Get below that water hole!" Two men who had elected to perform their ablutions above the point from which the culinary water supply was drawn moved hastily downstream. It was not long before Waddles was dispensing nourishment from the lowered tail-gate, ladling food and hot coffee into the plates and cups which the men held out to him. They drew away and sat cross-legged on the ground. The meal was almost finished when six horsemen rode down the valley and pulled up before the wagon. "What's the chance for scraps?" the leader asked. "Step down," Waddles invited. "And throw a feed in you. She's still a-steaming."