So Robin, deep in his own reflections, swung into his saddle and rode away to camp. If Ivy had not been asleep in her room he would have tarried longer. But he would see her to-morrow. He fell asleep, in a bed unrolled on the grass, with his face turned to the stars. He wakened once when the riders came pattering into camp and got quietly into their beds. A cloudless sky brilliant with specks of silver arched over him, a luminous inverted bowl. Crickets chirped in the grass. Night horses tied to the bed wagon, on picket, made their usual noises. The bells on the _remuda_ tinkled distantly. Small sounds in a deep hush overlying a lonely land. Robin turned over and slept again. At daybreak the outfit mounted. There was a herd to trim. While the bulk of that seventeen hundred bore the Block S there were strays of half a dozen other brands to be shipped, and these cattle were not jammed indiscriminately into cars to be sorted in Chicago. The cattleman unscrambled his own eggs. From dawn to noon the flat a mile outside the stockyards was a scurry of dust, flying riders, steers and cows being shot out of the main herd into little bunches held separate. Once sorted by brand and sex each group moved into the shipping pens. By four o’clock the last longhorn was on his way, two trainloads of him. The riders were free until the following morning, when the Block S would pull south. Thirty miles beyond Birch Creek, beyond the Bar M Bar, Steele would throw his riders on circle again to comb the range for beef. The camp would move day by day toward the railroad as the riders gathered a herd. But now, as the last door clanged shut on the last animal, the cowboys flung themselves on their horses and charged down on the Silver Dollar. For ten hours they had worked in heat and dust. They were hot and thirsty. Cold beer was nectar to their parched mouths. Robin stayed with the crowd for one round of elbow-crooking. Then he crossed to the hotel. The Maynes were still in town. He sought the store. As he clanked up the steps he passed Dan Mayne and Adam Sutherland perched on the planking, Mayne talking with emphatic motions of his hands and head, Sutherland big, fat, good-natured, placidly listening, chewing on a cigar. Robin nodded and went on in, looking for Ivy. But in that semi-public place he couldn’t talk to her nor she to him even if she had not been deep in purchases of dry goods aided and abetted by the blacksmith’s wife and the hotel keeper’s daughter. Out of their natural habitat both Robin and Ivy were shy, self-conscious. They exchanged greetings. Robin bought a pound of Bull Durham and took himself off. Sutherland rose as he came out and ambled away toward his house. Robin sat down beside Mayne. The old man’s eyes were slightly reddened. Otherwise he showed no sign of his overnight tussle with John Barleycorn. His mind was still occupied with cows and cow thieves.