The weary cowboys turned the herd and drove the cattle back over the trail they had followed, until they reached their old bed ground. There they turned them loose under the charge of two or three men, and all the others returned to camp for breakfast, which, as a matter of fact, was now dinner, for it was high noon.
"Boys," said McIntyre while they were eating their meal, "we may as well stop here now and rest up; but, Jack and Joe and Donald, as soon as you've eaten, you three go out and relieve those fellows on herd, and let them come in and get some dinner. After these boys have slept two or three hours, I will send men out to relieve you."
The cattle, like the cow punchers, were tired, and as soon as they had grazed a while they lay down, showing no disposition to move. The boys, therefore, took a commanding position on a hill and holding the ropes of their horses allowed them to feed about them.
"Of course, that was not a stampede, Joe?" asked Donald uncertainly.
"Not much," said Joe. "That was just plain ordinary drifting; but there was one while, just before the cattle started, when I thought that it was nip and tuck whether we would have a stampede or not. It would not have taken much to start those cattle off, and it sure would have been a bad night to ride in front of 'em and to turn 'em."
"I don't see how a man could ride fast over such a country as we crossed," Donald said.
"Well," said Jack, "could, or could not, he'd just have had to. It's a ground-hog case when a stampede is on."
"But I should think you'd break your neck; and kill all your horses."
"Well," declared Joe, "sometimes a man falls and breaks his neck, and oftener still a horse falls and breaks his neck or a leg, but of course the cattle have got to be turned. That's what we're hired for, and it's our business to do our work."
"You spoke before about turning the cattle. Where do you want to turn them to, and why do you want to turn them?"
"We want to turn 'em to get 'em to mill, and if we once get 'em milling, the trouble is pretty well over."
"I am sorry to seem so dull," said Donald, "but what do you mean by milling?"
"Why, we want to turn the cattle and get 'em running around in a circle. The hind ones will follow the lead ones, and if you can turn the lead ones, and keep 'em turning, after awhile they just keep running around and around in a circle and the hind ones follow 'em, and as you can understand, they don't get very far away."