, pointing at the jack.

"Sure," Chet replied. "Both of my hosses has glanders, but this jack's
all right. I've rid him offen. You'll find him gentle an' perseverin'
an' good comp'ny. Mebbe he does go a mite faster toward home than away
from it, but he allus gets somewhere. His name's Felix, after a uncle o'
mine what--"

Followed a personal history of Chet's uncle, to which Whitey did not
listen. He was thinking of the figure he would cut arriving at the Star
Circle on Felix, and hoped he would get there at night. Chet returned to
the subject of the jack, to whose back a blanket was strapped.

"I'm sorry my saddles won't fit him," said Chet, "but you'll find
sittin' on this blanket as comf'tbul as your mother's rockin'-chair, an'
you've only sixty mile t' go."

"Sixty miles!" gasped Whitey.

"Thassall. Now you keep t' that road, with them hills t' your right, an'
when you get t'--"

Chet described at length Whitey's route to the Star Circle Ranch. Sadly
Whitey mounted Felix and set forth. Again the road proved little but a
grass-grown wagon track through the rolling plain edged by the gray
hills. And soon it seemed to Whitey that Chet had been over-enthusiastic
when he said that Felix's back was easy as a rocking-chair. At first it
might have seemed so, but after awhile it felt more like a rail fence.

And Whitey discovered peculiar traits in Felix. He constantly wanted to
turn to the right, and had to be pulled back, and he was cold-jawed. And
once in a while he would stop short, and when Whitey urged him on, would
start in a despondent way, with his head down and his ears flopping, and
would have to be kicked or whipped to be urged to do anything faster
than a walk. It was all very discouraging.

Perhaps you never have seen a horse or a jack attached to the end of the
pole of one of those old stone grinding-mills, around which he marches
and marches, while the grain is ground between the whirling stones in
the center. That was Felix's regular job, which accounted for many of
his peculiarities--but Whitey never knew about it.

Among the interesting things about animals is their sense of time. Many
of them seem to be as accurate as clocks and some of them as useful as
calendars. One dog, in particular, comes to my mind, whom his master
used to bathe on Sundays. And when this custom was firmly fixed in
his--the pup's--mind, he would go away on Friday night and stay away
till Monday morning. He got to be the di