purty a little horse
as a man ever throwed a leg over, anywhere.

Jim said he'd offer that horse, only he was a little bashful in the
presence of strangers--meaning the horse--and didn't show up in a style
to make his owner proud of him. The trouble with that horse was he used
to belong to a one-legged man, and got so accustomed to the feel of a
one-legged man on him that he was plumb foolish between two legs.

That horse didn't have much style to him, and no gait to speak of; but
he was as good a cow-horse as ever chawed a bit. If the Duke thought
he'd be able to ride him, he was welcome to him. Taterleg winked what
Lambert interpreted as a warning at that point, and in the faces of the
others there were little gleams of humor, which they turned their heads,
or bent to study the ground, as Siwash did, to hide.

"Well, I'm not much on a horse," Lambert confessed.

"You look like a man that'd been on a horse a time or two," said Jim,
with a knowing inflection, a shrewd flattery.

"I used to ride around a little, but that's been a good while ago."

"A feller never forgits how to ride," Siwash put in; "and if a man wants
to work on the range, he's got to ride 'less'n he goes and gits a job
runnin' sheep, and that's below any man that is a man."

Jim sat pondering the question, hands hooked in front of his knees, a
match in his mouth beside his unlighted cigarette.

"I been thinkin' I'd sell that horse," said he reflectively. "Ain't got
no use for him much; but I don't know."

He looked off over the chuck wagon, through the tops of the scrub pines
in which the camp was set, drawing his thin, white eyebrows, considering
the case.

"Winter comin' on and hay to buy," said Siwash.

"That's what I've been thinkin' and studyin' over. Shucks! I don't need
that horse. I tell you what I'll do, Duke"--turning to Lambert, brisk as
with a gush of sudden generosity--"if you can ride that old pelter, I'll
give him to you for a present. And I bet you'll not git as cheap an
offer of a horse as that ever in your life ag'in."

"I think it's too generous--I wouldn't want to take advantage of it,"
Lambert told him, trying to show a modesty in the matter that he did
not feel.

"I ain't a-favorin' you, Duke; not a dollar. If I needed that horse, I'd
hang onto him, and you wouldn't git him a cent under thirty-five bucks;
but when a man don't need a horse, and it's a expense on him, he can
afford to give it away--he can give it awa