The herd, restless by reason of the horsemen threading it, shifted, gave ground, expanded, and contracted, so that its shape and size were always changing in the constant area guarded by the sentinel cowboys.

Dust arose from these movements, clouds of it, to eddy and swirl, thicken and dissipate in the currents of air.

Now it concealed all but the nearest dimly-outlined animals; again it parted in rifts through which mistily we discerned the riders moving in and out of the fog; again it lifted high and thin, so that we saw in clarity the whole herd and the outriders and the mesas far away.
As the afternoon waned, long shafts of sun slanted through this dust.
It played on men and beasts magically, expanding them to the dimensions of strange genii, appearing and effacing themselves in the billows of vapour from some enchanted bottle.
We on the outside found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us by the cooler hours.

The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient.

We rode continually back and forth, turning the slow movement in on itself.
Occasionally some particularly enterprising cow would conclude that one or another of the cut-herds would suit her better than this mill of turmoil.