“She used to love a good rider,” Amby Phillips said reflectively. “So you bronco fighters can have hope. One time she was half-stuck on a kid that broke horses on Little Eagle--about four years ago, if I remember right. I seen her sit on the fence and clap her hands when he topped off a colt that jumped high, wide an’ handsome. She used to run around with him a lot. An’ one day a bronc went over backward on this kid an’ killed him. She went all to pieces over it, they say. She ain’t been here much since. You know her, Mark?” Steele nodded. “Met her two or three times,” he drawled. “I was over to the house last night. Nice lookin’, all right. Kinda acts as if she was proud as hell about something, though.” Old Tex Matthews snickered audibly and Steele flashed a cold glance at him. “What you say, Tex?” he inquired with exaggerated politeness. “I didn’t say. But I was thinkin’ that if it don’t rain soon and soften up this ground I’ll have to shoe a couple of horses.” Steele made no comment. There was a funny little quirk about the Texan’s mouth when he made that answer, and he looked straight at Shining Mark. For some reason there was a brief silence, and after that there was no more mention of May Sutherland. Presently they stirred up their horses and tore down into a creek bottom where the wagons were to stop for noon. That night they camped under Shadow Butte again. The following day took them far east of Birch Creek, east of the Bar M Bar. The Little Rockies loomed blue on the horizon beyond the broad reach of the Gros Ventre Reservation. On their first ride they picked up a fair sprinkling of beef cattle and Robin cut a score of Bar M Bars into the day herd to throw back on his home range. After that the routine of each day followed its usual order of saddling at dawn, riding circle, bunching the gathered cattle in a compact mass near the camp while they cut out the prime beef and branded such calves as had been missed on the spring round-up. Each day they moved a few miles back toward Big Sandy, working the range on either side of the wagons as far as they could reach in one ride.