CHAPTER NINE.
THE OLD TIMER About a week later, in the course of the round-up, we reached the valley of the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the dilapidated and abandoned adobe structure that had once been a ranch house of some importance.
Just at dusk one afternoon we finished cutting the herd which our morning's drive had collected.

The stray-herd, with its new additions from the day's work, we pushed rapidly into one big stock corral.

The cows and unbranded calves we urged into another.

Fifty head of beef steers found asylum from dust, heat, and racing to and fro, in the mile square wire enclosure called the pasture.

All the remainder, for which we had no further use we drove out of the flat into the brush and toward the distant mountains.