Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Grand Round-Up. 97 spokes from the hub of a wheel, reaching out to every quarter of the compass. The boys were the last to get orders, and they were secretly delighted when Old Sile attached him- self to their squad. “Guess ye think I had ought to be home,” said the veteran, with a smile, as Cuthbert looked at him in- quiringly. “An old feller like me hadn’t ought to be out with young bucks; but I kinder like to see young America work.” And he nodded approval as Karl and Cuthbert ambled alongside. They had quite a sharp gallop before they reached the broken country where the cattle as- signed to their care might be found. Of course, the first duty was to ride round and round the scattered herd, “milling” them in the cow- boy parlance, that is grinding them closer into a compact bunch, so that they could be readily driven, once started, in any direction desired. With schoolboy shouts they started the bunch to- ward the ranch. Other herds were converging that way, so that the whole prairie seemed alive with bellowing cat- tle, and shouting herders, wheeling to the right and to the left as their practiced eye detected and antici- pated some movement on the part of their charges that, if left without attention, might have developed seriously. Cuthbert had never in all his life beheld so glori- ous a spectacle. While the latter were being driven in he had hur- ried to the Kelly ranch building where he even mounted to the ridgepole of the house, the better from this apology for an eyrie to take in the whole panorama around the circular horizon. Every- where he saw lowing herds and rollicking cowboys, bent upon making this grand work day of the year a comiclooks C©