| OCR Text |
Show "S7 THE BULL-353 Lust passed over him in a wave, a green promise, and was gone. He filled die bucket and walked back to camp. * * * The men were on the fall roundup. The previous day they had come upon die main body of die herd grazing on a meadow near a beaver pond. When they rode out of die timber a cow lifted her head and sounded die alarm, turning to face the intruders and bawling for her calf. The men reined their horses; the cow trotted away toward her calf, met him and wheeled back. Other heads came up across die meadow, beside die pond, in a clump of willows, at die edge of die timber; white faces turned, the warning bawl sounded and echoed and sounded again; die herd began to move, bunching, each cow toward her calf, each calf toward his dam. Two of die riders fanned out to hasten the bunching, the boy riding down toward die pond and die hired man climbing his mare up die rise of die meadow toward a stand of aspen. The man held, watching his catde, sitting his mount as immobile and erect as a statue. The bawling roused the herd bulls. From the heat of the day on die meadow they had withdrawn to the shade of the surrounding brush and aspen, there to lie next to the earth in ponderous content. Herefords, broad and heavy, at die first alarm they lunged to their feet and heads up moved in a heavy swinging stride toward their herd. Two were young bulls and they came up out of the willows from below the beaver dam, coming eagerly, ready for a gallop. The men watched them, not exactly warily but with a new alertness, waiting for them to grasp the situation, to see that it was only men on horses. And then the herd boss came crashing out of the brush at the top of the meadow, coming quickly down upon them head up and ready, bigger dian the younger bulls, sharply horned and thunderously muscled. He stopped on a rise to look out over his herd, to size up the men; and each man looked up at him, each one caught up by the sudden presence of the great animal. For in all his massive body - the weight and the power forward, flowing from the trim, lean hind-quarters forward into die huge fore-quarters, to the heavily muscled neck and up into those horns - in all die beautiful symmetry of him, every line and every movement surged forward into a flawless unity of purpose: he would have charged a cougar or an army. |
