The thing that the wise man from the East cannot at first understand is how the one hundred thousand head of cattle wandering at large over the range are ever collected together. He sees a dozen or more steers here, a bunch of horses there, and a single steer or two a mile off, and even as he looks at them they disappear in the brush, and as far as his chance of finding them again would be, they might as well stand forty miles away at the other end of the ranch. But this is a very simple problem to the ranchman. Mr. Kleberg, for instance, receives an order from a firm in Chicago calling for one thousand head of cattle. The breed of cattle which the firm wants is grazing in a corner of the range fenced in by barb-wire, and marked pale blue for convenience on a beautiful map blocked out in colors, like a patch-work quilt, which hangs in Mr. Kleberg’s office. When the order is received, he sends a Mexican on a pony to tell the men near that particular pale blue pasture to round up one thousand head of cattle, and at the same time directs his superintendent to send in a few days as many cowboys to that pasture as are needed to “hold” one thousand head of cattle on the way to the railroad station. The boys on the pasture, which we will suppose is ten miles square, will take ten of their number and five extra ponies apiece, which one man leads, and from one to another of which they shift their saddles as men do in polo, and go directly to the water-tanks in the ten square miles of land. A cow will not often wander more than two and a half miles from water, and so, with the water-tank (which on the King ranch may be either a well with a wind-mill or a dammed cañon full of rain-water) as a rendezvous, the finding of the cattle is comparatively easy, and ten men can round up one thousand head in a day or two. When they have them all together, the cowboys who are to drive them to the station arrive, and take them off. At the station the agent of the Chicago firm and the agent of the King ranch ride through the herd together, and if they disagree as to the fitness of any one or more of the cattle, an outsider is called in, and his decision is final. The cattle are then driven on to the cars, and Mr. Kleberg’s responsibility is at an end. In the spring there is a general rounding up, and thousands and thousands of steers are brought in from the different pastures, and those for which contracts have been made during the winter are shipped off to the markets, and the calves are branded. [Illustration: A SHATTERED IDOL]