six o'clock
Behind the stable lay the `` pasture , '' a thousand acres of desert fenced in with wire . There the hardy cow-ponies sought out the sparse , but nutritious , bunch grass , sixty of them , beautiful as antelope , for they were the pick of Senor Johnson 's herds . And all about lay the desert , shimmering , changing , many-tinted , wonderful , hemmed in by the mountains that seemed tenuous and thin , like beautiful mists , and by the sky that seemed hard and polished like a turquoise . Each morning at six o'clock the ten cow-punchers of the home ranch drove the horses to the corral , neatly roped the dozen to be `` kept up '' for that day , and rewarded the rest with a feed of grain . Then they rode away at a little fox trot , two by two . All day long they travelled thus , conducting the business of the range , and at night , having completed the circle , they jingled again into the corral . At the ten other ranches this programme had been duplicated .