The cattle grazed in scattered bunches over some hundred thousand acres of the east range--they are not so companionable as horses and do not herd so closely in their feeding. Nor will the bulls take such responsibilities upon their shoulders as do stallions with the mares and colts. Come-a-Seven, in fact, never saw his father, to his knowledge. That ponderous, morose scion of Hereford stock lived his own life in his own way, spending half the day sleeping in the shade of a cottonwood; and he did not worry about family matters. His scores of children might fare as best they could. In the meantime he had his amusements. Besides, what on earth were their mothers for? On his eighth day Come-a-Seven started out to see something of the world. No great variety offered within his ken--a rolling expanse, green-gray, gashed by numerous brick-red gullies; hundreds of scraggy mesquite bushes and some prickly-pear; two or three regal cottonwoods on the bank of a creek, whose sandy bed was a third of a mile wide; beyond, a butte lifting from the earth like a monstrous mushroom. That was what he saw--that, and big blue blotches of shadows moving over the country like an army of specters. Piles of tumbled white clouds gave promise of rain at a later date. Upon this the red-and-white gazed, his head moving from side to side in jerks, ears twitching, tail straight out as when he fed. He was trying to get up nerve to sally farther afield. As a starter and a spur to courage he curveted clumsily, but was brought up short by the sight of another calf of about his own age, standing not a dozen yards away, surveying him with the liveliest interest. Come-a-Seven tried to look hostile, even threatening, but his curiosity got the better of him, because the calf into whose face he glared had the merest stump of a tail. Advancing a step, he intimated in his own peculiar, gruff calf-manner that the abbreviated member puzzled him. If Come-a-Seven had ever dodged a coyote, he would not have been so ignorant. The other evinced no resentment and they approached in amicable fashion, made a playful butt at each other and became fast friends. After that they would loaf about together in the hot summer days, making trouble for the other calves and stirring up bickerings and feuds. None of them was of a serious nature. The nearest approach to a tragic ending happened when the red-and-white smashed, full tilt, into a six-months’-old half-brother, of whose relationship he was ignorant--not that this would have made any difference--and knocked him off the steep wall of a tank into the water. He had to run at that, for the other was a husky, ardent calf, and he was angry all through. When he scrambled out, he went hunting for the red-and-white, but by that time the offender was safely under his mother’s eye, which fact he flaunted brazenly.