270 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



the herd, having drifted a hundred yards or so, would 

 be once more brought up standing. We always had 

 to let them drift a little to prevent their spreading, 

 out too much. The din of the thunder was terrific, 

 peal following peal until they mingled in one continuous, 

 rumbling roar, and at every thunderclap louder than 

 its fellows the cattle would try to break away. Dark- 

 ness had set in, but each flash of lightning showed us 

 a dense array of tossing horns and staring eyes. It 

 grew always harder to hold in the herd, but the drift 

 took us along to the corrals already spoken of, whose 

 entrances were luckily to windward. As soon as we 

 reached the first we cut off part of the herd and turned 

 it within, and after again doing this with the second we 

 were able to put all the remaining animals into the 

 third. The insrant the cattle were housed five-sixths 

 of the horsemen started back at full speed for the 

 wagons ; the rest of us barely waited to put up the 

 bars and make the corrals secure before galloping 

 after them. We had to ride right in the teeth of the 

 driving storm, and once at the wagons we made small 

 delay in crawling under our blankets, damp though the 

 latter were ; for we were ourselves far too wet, stiff, 

 and cold not to hail with grateful welcome any kind of 

 shelter from the wind and rain. 



All animals were benumbed by the violence of this 

 gale of cold rain : a prairie chicken rose from under 

 my horse's feet so heavily that, thoughtlessly striking 

 at it, I cut it down with my whip ; while when a jack- 

 rabbit got up ahead of us, it was barely able to limp 

 clumsily out of our way." 



Mr. Carson, in his reminiscences of ranching in 

 Arizona, gives a vivid picture of the -work on a 



