"Your wages and schooling start in to-morrow at sunup." It was early in the morning when the first train arrived, hungry, thirsty, tired, bawling a general protest against fate and man's mode of travel.

Thurston, with a long pole in his hand, stood on the narrow plank near the top of a chute wall and prodded vaguely at an endless, moving incline of backs.

Incidentally he took his cue from his neighbors, and shouted till his voice was a croak-though he could not see that he accomplished anything either by his prodding or his shouting.
Below him surged the sea of hide and horns which was barely suggestive of the animals as individuals.

Out in the corrals the dust-cloud hung low, just as it had hovered every day for more than two weeks; just as it would hover every day for two weeks longer.

Across the yards near the big, outer gate Deacon Smith's crew was already beginning to brand.