breakfast. He said the boss, meaning Findlay, had instructed him to take Barrett on as assistant day wrangler, and keep him at Eagle Rock camp until further notice. The boss and the big boss had ridden away together at the first streak of morning. It was Grubb's opinion that they were going to the ranch.
There it was, under Fred Grubb's kindly hand, that Barrett learned that steps of progression lead up to the calling of cowpuncher, as in almost any calling worthy the name. He learned that a greenhorn could not at once ride with the elect, except in cases of extraordinary favor from those in charge. His beginning must be in a menial capacity, a subject of humiliating orders, a butt of broad jokes, coarse, often cruel.
He further learned what he had begun to suspect already; that a horse wrangler was not one who held argument with a horse. He was nothing more dignified than a groom who herded the animals out at night, if he happened to be a night wrangler, some of them with hobbles on their legs to prevent them running off, and herded them back to the corral at early morning for the lords of the range to select their mounts. Being a day wrangler, such as Fred Grubb, was a somewhat easier, if no more dignified, job.
There were a large number of horses at Eagle Rock camp in proportion to the men, as there were, and probably continue to be, in every cow camp. Fred said this was because every man on the Diamond Tail had from six to eight horses at his command, one of his own, the rest supplied by the company. In the busy days of the branding and roundup, a cowboy often used up four
