Racing the Storm

B. M. Bower has a western story. It is the night before July 4th, and the ranch hands are faced with the task of branding hundreds of calves before a threatening storm breaks, if they wish to finish their work and get to the town in time for celebrations.

They are all very cross and irritable, sweating and fuming at their heavy toil. At last, by great industry, the last calf has scampered “blatting” to his mother in the herd and the men set off at a gallop towards town. Presently they come to a river-ford, but find it impassable by reason of the heavy floods.

They turn to a point higher upstream. Then they come suddenly upon the huddled wreck of a man lying in the fringe of tall grasses by the bank.

The lad turns out to be a hunted cattle-thief, quite unknown to them all, who has struggled ofT his drowning horse despite a fatal gun-wound in his breast. Between his gasping breaths he tells his story, begging them to see him decently buried so that his parents may never know his shame. The spirit of the range is touched. Every man is on his honour.

And when the burial is over, without a word of suggestion or a thought of religion, regardless of Independence Day, the village girls, the dancing and the wine, every man turns his pony’s head back to the round-up camp. They stood together, they risked arrest, they put their realities first.