Osterhaut poured a cup of coffee. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.” When he put the cup to his mouth Wil saw his eyes grow round. The Deacon spat it out, spraying coffee across the ground. He made a dreadful face. “Sweet dear Jesus!”

The cook leered at him with nasty satisfaction.

Osterhaut said, “I shouldn’t laugh if I were you. If the coffee hasn’t improved by tomorrow, I personally will see that you’re fired and that you never work on this range again.”

The cook sneered. “Take your Christian charity to some other wagon if you don’t like the taste of this one.”

Pierce Bolan had the horse under control now. He said, “Watch out now, cookie, or Deacon Osterhaut personally will see that you’re lynched.” He said it in an uncannily accurate imitation of Osterhaut’s thick Southern accent. A ripple of easy laughter ran around the campfire. Osterhaut threw his cup at the cook’s feet, but the vessel landed at an angle and splashed what was left of the coffee across Osterhaut’s own boots. Amid louder laughter the Deacon stalked away.

In the first soft grey of dawn the night wranglers drove the day’s remuda of cow-ponies into the rope corral. It was expected that each rider would wear out several horses during the day; but only the mounts for the first shift were brought in at dawn.

Uncle Bill Sewall was unhappy because most of the Elkhorn’s eighty horses—many of them well trained by Dutch Reuter—had been contributed to the round-up’s pool of livestock; it was the custom for each man to draw straws for the horses he would use each day. It meant you never knew whether you were drawing an untrained animal.

Each man, upon learning the identities of the beasts in his string, would curse for an extended interval; that was the ritual. Wil could see by Mr. Roosevelt’s face that the boss disapproved as strongly as the Deacon did of such excessive profanity, but Roosevelt held his tongue. He seemed more than usually distracted this morning. Wil thought perhaps it was a matter of insufficient sleep—several times in the night he’d heard the boss coughing and retching—but Uncle Bill Sewall said, “He has got nobody now and he still thinks that’s his tragedy. Never mind—hard work cheers a man, and I expect he’ll find a woman before long. There’s your horse, Wil.”

The best ropers in the outfit were the only men trusted to go into the corral. Wil said, “I’d just as soon rope out my own horse.”

But Dutch pulled him back. “You let rope fall wrong, just once, and maybe stampede you got.”

“You taught me to rope as well as any.”

“Not these horse. You wait, Wil. ‘Patient, ever patient, and joy shall be thy share.’”

“Where’d you learn that?”

“The good wife,” Dutch said in a grunt. “Your horse—that one. I tell the roper.”

When the roper brought the horse out—a bay,’ fifteen hands, with an amiable eye—Wil expended a good deal of effort jamming the bit between its clenched teeth and slipping the bridle over its tossing head. Then it was a matter of coaxing the animal with gentle words and caresses to hold still long enough to adjust a saddle-blanket across its spine, settle the heavy kak on its midsection and have it cinched up before the horse could get rid of it.

Half the ponies in the cavvy seemed to have learned the trick of puffing themselves up with air so that when you tightened the cinch they could exhale and leave so much slack that when you tried to mount up, your weight in the stirrup would slide the saddle right off until you were hanging upside down.

Wil had to agree with his uncle on one thing: the equine species was characterized by its malicious sense of humor.

The trick was to plant a boot in the beast’s ribs and poke hard while tightening the cinch.

A small audience of cowboys, interested to see how the Down-East boatman would do, watched while Wil untied the reins, gathered them at the withers, hopped on his right foot while he tried to jab his left boot into the stirrup, and went dancing around on one toe while the horse pirouetted.

Finally he swung up onto the animal. Then it was a contest of wills. The bay went to bucking. Wil had to endure the shouts and laughs of cowboys who had mounted their older and tamer steeds without incident.

The horse was not terribly serious about its rebellion but it sunfished enough to make Wil grab the saddlehorn to keep from flying off. This act of cowardice was enough to make the audience jeer. “Don’t go to leather, Wil. Ride him honest!”

Hot-faced, Wil let go and lifted his right arm in the air to show he meant to play the game by the rules. It was fortunate the horse had a mild temper, for it eased down almost immediately.

Uncle Bill Sewall and Roosevelt rode forward to join him. By the luck of the draw they seemed to have tractable mounts this morning. Several riders moved away pointedly when Roosevelt approached.

Uncle Bill was unimpressed with his mount. “One’s no better than another. I’m no lover of horses,” he said. “They’re vicious stupid beasts, and dangerous. They’d as soon kick you as bite you. They’d break their own backs if they could fall on a man and crush him. And as for stupidity—what other animal on the face of the earth would let a man ride it to death?”

At the moment Wil was not inclined to dispute the point. Dutch Reuter, Pierce Bolan, Deacon Osterhaut and four of Huidekoper’s hands joined them. Roosevelt, clad in horsehide chaparajos, buckskin shirt, silk neckerchief and enormous sombrero, pointed east toward the many-colored stripes of the malpais. “That’s our district for the morning. The job is to collect every head of cattle. Come along, fellows.”

It was a twelve-mile ride to the edge of the Bad Lands. Nobody talked much. It was clear to Wil Dow that the Huidekoper cowboys were under strict instructions not to be rude to Mr. Roosevelt, but from the clandestine glances they exchanged he could see what was in their minds.

At the crest they looked out across the plain.

“Nothing but dust and heat and mosquitoes,” said Bill Sewall.

His sour tone made Pierce Bolan laugh.

“Not to mention blisters and bad food,” said Deacon Osterhaut; but no one laughed this time. Uncle Bill’s complaints were amusing; Osterhaut’s were not. Evidently he never heard the offensiveness of his own disagreeably whining voice.

As for Uncle Bill Sewall—all he wanted, he kept insisting, was to return to his home back East in the States. But it had not escaped anyone’s attention that he had made no effort to accomplish that goal. His threats were funny because they were empty.

The buffalo grass was yellow. Patches of it had been grazed to the ground by Merino sheep. The few cattle that had wandered up this far were easy to spot and easy to collect; they’d been fattening on what was left of the plateau’s little blue-stem grasses. Two of the Huidekoper men rode out to gather them while Pierce Bolan said, “Rest of us may as well split up by twos. Each take a coulee and follow it down. Any cattle you find, push ’em ahead of you.”

Wil Dow said, “What about sheep?”

Dutch Reuter said immediately, “Shoot them.”

Pierce Bolan was entertained. “That’s the right idea. Anybody care for a mutton dinner?”

It brought a scowl from Osterhaut and a flash of sun from Mr. Roosevelt’s sunglasses. “Let’s have it clear. If we come across sheep we’ll leave them alone.”

Bolan said nothing to that. He adjusted the reins in his grip. “We’ll join up at the creek five miles down. All right?”

“It’s a practical plan,” Roosevelt commented. “Who’ll ride with me?”

There was a moment’s awkward silence. Then Sewall said, “I will.”

Pierce Bolan pointed quickly to Wil Dow. “You come with me.” It was pre-emptive—Bolan didn’t want to end up paired with Osterhaut. Neither did anyone else and it might have been quite awkward but Dutch Reuter generously offered to accompany the Deacon.