broke into a lope. Panhandle stuck on somehow and turned the pony
toward the house. Curly loped faster. Panhandle felt the wind in his
hair. He bounced up and down. Squealing with delight he twisted his
hands in the flowing mane and held on. At the top of the hill his joy
became divided by fear. Curly kept on loping down the hill toward the
house. Faster and faster! Panhandle bounced higher and higher, up on
his neck, back on his haunches, until suddenly his hold broke and he
was thrown. Down he went with a thud. It jarred him so he could
hardly get up, and he reeled dizzily. There stood his mother, white of
face, reproachful of eye. "Oh mama--I ain't hurt!" he cried.

Bill Smith was approached about this and listened, stroking his lean
chin, while the mother eloquently enlarged upon the lad's guilt.

"Wal, wife, let the boy ride," he replied. "He's a nervy kid. I named
him well. He'll make a great cowboy. Panhandle Smith. Pan, for
short!"

Pan heard that and his heart beat high. How he loved his dad then!
"Cowboy" meant one of the great riders of the range. He would be one.
Thereafter he lived on the back of Curly. He learned to ride, to stick
on like a burr, to keep his seat on the bare back of the pony, to move
with him as he moved. One day Pan was riding home from his uncle's,
and coming to a level stretch of ground he urged Curly to his topmost
speed. The wind stung him, the motion exhilarated him, controlling the
pony awoke and fixed some strange feeling in him. He was a cowboy.
Suddenly Curly put a speeding foot into a prairie-dog hole. Something
happened. Pan felt himself jerked loose and shot through the air. He
struck the ground and all went black. When he came to, he found he had
plowed the soft earth with his face, skinned nose and chin, but was not
badly hurt. That was his first great spill. It sobered him. Curly
waited for him a little way farther on and he was lame. Pan knew he
could not hide the evidences of his rashness, so he decided to tell the
truth.

Pan encountered his father at the barn.

"Say, you bloody cowpuncher," demanded his parent, "did he pitch with
you?"

"No, Dad," replied Pan, with effort. "I runned him fast."

"Ah--huh, so I see," went on the father; and after a searching look
over the boy he fell to examining the pony.

Pan emboldened by what his father had called him went straight to his
mother. She screamed at sight of him, and that struck