The corral was easy enough to find. It was butted up against a railroad spur and it was the biggest structure for miles around. It did look like it was built to hold a bull elephant, but that was the way the government did things. Instead of using barbed wire, where a horse like the black would likely have torn himself to bits, the government men had built corrals eight feet high, with wooden rails spaced a foot apart on both sides of heavy creosote railroad ties set deep into the ground, the rails fastened to the posts with spiral, four-inch spikes. They had enclosed a half dozen acres inside the rails. At a glance, it looked like there were now close to four hundred mustangs inside. There was a huge stack of prairie hay on the south side of the corral and mangers inside the rails for feeding the horses.

He was still a quarter mile away when two riders cantered out to intercept him. He knew both men, Horace Underhill and Alf Minteer, half-baked drugstore cowboys who liked to wear big shiny pistols on their hips. Between them, they would have trouble roping a fence post. When they saw who it was, the two reined up. Underhill lifted his ten-gallon hat.

“Mr. Paint,” he said. “How do? What brings you up this way?”

“How do, boys. We’re fixin to put in new corrals on the 8T8. My brother was sayin I should come have a look at this setup.”

Underhill nodded. “Well, if you need to pen up a few hundred buffalo, this is what you want. They sunk them posts four foot deep with posthole diggers. That’s some work. In this ground, you go down about a inch every half hour. Once you’re done, you couldn’t move them posts with nothing short of a diesel engine.”

Eli could see two riders on the far side of the corral, nearest to the railroad spur. Four men to keep watch on mustangs that were already corralled. It was sure enough a government operation.

“You need four riders to keep an eye on these horses when they’re already behind that fence?”

Minteer laughed. “Hell no. Aint nothing to watch. They aint goin noplace. But they pay us good to watch, so we’re all settin here. Except Saturday nights. That’s when we go into Gillette to howl.”

“Can’t say as I blame you. Don’t look like there’s a whole lot of fun out this way.”