y
assertion that the dark diagonal represented the vague ancestry of the
two sad-eyed calves couchant. Anybody could see that the calves were
part longhorn and part Hereford!

Pete rode out of Concho glittering in his new-found glory of shining
bit and spur, wide-brimmed Stetson, and chaps studded with
nickel-plated conchas. The creak of the stiff saddle-leather was music
to him. His brand-new and really good equipment almost made up for the
horse--an ancient pensioner that never seemed to be just certain when
he would take his next step and seemed a trifle surprised when he had
taken it. He was old, amiable, and willing, internally, but his legs,
somewhat of the Chippendale order, had seen better days. Ease and good
feeding had failed to fill him out. He was past taking on flesh. Roth
kept him about the place for short trips. Roth's lively team of pintos
were at the time grazing in a distant summer pasture.

Rowdy--the horse--seemed to feel that the occasion demanded something
of him. He pricked his ears as they crossed the canon bottom and
breasted the ascent as bravely as his three good legs would let him.
At the top he puffed hard. Despite Pete's urging, he stood stolidly
until he had gathered enough ozone to propel him farther. "Git along,
you doggone ole cockroach!" said Pete. But Rowdy was firm. He turned
his head and gazed sadly at his rider with one mournful eye that said
plainly, "I'm doing my level best." Pete realized that the ground just
traveled was anything but level, and curbed his impatience. "I'll jest
kind o' save him for the finish," he told himself. "Then I'll hook the
spurs into him and ride in a-boilin'. Don't care what he does after
that. He can set down and rest if he wants to. Git along, old
soap-foot," he cried--"soap-foot" possibly because Rowdy occasionally
slipped. His antique legs didn't always do just what he wanted them to
do.

Topping the mesa edge, Pete saw the distant green that fringed the
Concho home-ranch, topped by a curl of smoke that drifted lazily across
the gold of the morning. Without urging, Rowdy broke into a stiff
trot, that sounded Pete's inmost depths, despite his natural good seat
in the saddle. "Quit it!" cried Pete presently. "You'll be goin' on
crutches afore night if you keep that up.--And so'll I," he added.
Rowdy immediately stopped and turned his mournful eye on Pete.

If the trot had been the rhythmic _one, two, three, four_, Pete coul