"Sing? Well, I don't know. What kind of singing? I'm not famous for
my voice," admitted the boy.
"Just so's you can sing something the cows like, it'll be all
right," Steve told him. "If anything should happen, you have to
sing. It keeps the cows from getting nervous."
"Maybe if I sing it will make them nervous," suggested Walter, not
so easily jollied.
"You'd better learn Henery's song, here," said Steve. "Henery has
one he _calls_ 'My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean' an' he sings it in seven
different keys and there's forty stanzas to it. And when a cow hears
_that_--"
One of "Henery's" boots sailed through the air just then, and Steve
had to dodge it. Henry was not on the first watch.
Walter went out with the first crew. Somebody lent him a slicker,
for rain was prophesied. Steve said, drawlingly:
"If it keeps on like this so wet, we might's well be in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean. It's rained twice in ten weeks."
Walter's instructions were to keep just in sight of the man riding
around the herd ahead of him, to take it easy, and not to do
anything to disturb the quiet herd. Some of the cattle were lying
down chewing their cud; others were moving slowly while they
cropped the grass, all headed west. Riding herd seemed, after an
hour or two, to be the dreariest kind of work to the Eastern boy.
Then he noticed that there was a chill in the air and that distant
lightning played on the clouds to the north.
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