three days there was little communication between the two. It was
evident that he had no intention of forcing his society upon her, and
her failure to prepare his meals failed to elicit a single sign to show
that he had expected otherwise; the contrary was true, in fact, for he
invariably prepared enough for two. It was clear that he exercised the
same patience toward her that he showed in handling the green
four-year-olds; and she was inclined to be a little scornful of his
method of gentle-breaking them. She felt her own ability to handle any
horse on the range although old Cal Warren had gentled every animal she
had wanted for her own and flatly refused to let her mount any others.
Waddles was as insistent upon this point as her parent had been, but
never had she known a cowhand who took time and pains to gentle his own
string.

In the afternoon of the third day she saw him swing to the back of a
big bay, easing into the saddle without a jar, and the colt ambled
round the corral, rolling his eyes back toward the thing clamped upon
him but making no effort to pitch. He dismounted and stripped off the
saddle, cinched it on a second horse and let him stand, leading a third
out to a snubbing post near the door of the blacksmith shop where he
proceeded to put on his first set of shoes.

The girl went out and sat on the sill of the shop door and watched him.
The colt pulled back in an effort to release the forefoot that the man
held clamped between his leather-clad knees, then changed his tactics
and sagged his weight against Harris.

"You Babe!" the man ordered. "Don't you go leaning on me." He pared
down the hoof and fitted the shoe but before nailing it on he released
the colt's foot and addressed the girl. "If I'd fight him now while
he's spooky and half-scared it would spoil him maybe," he explained.

"I gentle-break mine, too," she said, and the man overlooked the
inflection which, as plainly as words, was intended to convey the
impression that his ways were effeminate. "If every man used up his
time gentling his string he'd never have a day off to work at anything
else."

"Why, it don't use up much time," he objected. "They halfway break
themselves, standing round with a saddle on and having a man handle
them a little between spells of regular work--like cutting firewood and
such. And it's a saving of time in the end. There's three hundred odd
days every year when a man consumes considerable time fi