'll not do that right now or any other time,"
said he. "I happen to want him."

The Virginian could do no more. He had heard cow-punchers say to
refractory ponies, "You keep still, or I'll Balaam you!" and he now
understood the aptness of the expression.

Meanwhile Balaam began to lead Pedro to the creek for a last drink
before starting across the torrid drought. The horse held back on the
rein a little, and Balaam turned and cut the whip across his forehead.
A delay of forcing and backing followed, while the Virginian, already
in the saddle, waited. The minutes passed, and no immediate prospect,
apparently, of getting nearer Sunk Creek.

"He ain' goin' to follow you while you're beatin' his haid," the
Southerner at length remarked.

"Do you think you can teach me anything about horses?" retorted Balaam.

"Well, it don't look like I could," said the Virginian, lazily.

"Then don't try it, so long as it's not your horse, my friend."

Again the Southerner levelled his eye on Balaam. "All right," he said,
in the same gentle voice. "And don't you call me your friend. You've
made that mistake twiced."

The road was shadeless, as it had been from the start, and they could
not travel fast. During the first few hours all coolness was driven out
of the glassy morning, and another day of illimitable sun invested the
world with its blaze. The pale Bow Leg Range was coming nearer, but its
hard hot slants and rifts suggested no sort of freshness, and even
the pines that spread for wide miles along near the summit counted for
nothing in the distance and the glare, but seemed mere patches of dull
dry discoloration. No talk was exchanged between the two travellers, for
the cow-puncher had nothing to say and Balaam was sulky, so they moved
along in silent endurance of each other's company and the tedium of the
journey.

But the slow succession of rise and fall in the plain changed and
shortened. The earth's surface became lumpy, rising into mounds and
knotted systems of steep small hills cut apart by staring gashes of
sand, where water poured in the spring from the melting snow. After a
time they ascended through the foot-hills till the plain below was for a
while concealed, but came again into view in its entirety, distant and a
thing of the past, while some magpies sailed down to meet them from
the new country they were entering. They passed up through a small
transparent forest of dead trees standing stark and white, and a