y of outlaw horses. And they wanted him in the rough-riding contest!
Andy, perhaps, had never before been placed in just such a position.

"Are you sure of what the horse will do?" Mr. Coleman repeated, seeing
that Andy was taking a long time to reply.

Andy licked his cigarette, twisted an end and leaned backward while he
felt in his pocket for a match. From the look of his face you never
could have told how very uncomfortable he felt "Naw," he drawled. "I
ain't never sure of what _any_ hoss will do. I've had too much
dealings with 'em for any uh that brand uh foolishness." He lighted
the cigarette as if that were the only matter in which he took any
real interest, though he was thinking fast.

Mr. Coleman looked nonplussed. "But I thought--you said--"

"What I said," Andy retorted evenly, "hit the blue roan two years ago;
maybe he's reformed since then; I dunno. Nobody's rode him, here." He
could not resist a sidelong glance at Happy Jack. "There was some talk
of it, but it never come to a head."

"Yuh offered me a hundred dollars--" Happy Jack began accusingly.

"And yuh never made no move to earn it, that I know of. By gracious,
yuh all seem to think I ought to _mind_-read that hoss! I ain't seen
him for two years. Maybe so, he's a real wolf yet; maybe so, he's a
sheep." He threw out both his hands to point the end of the
argument--so far as he was concerned--stuck them deep into his
trousers' pockets and walked away before he could be betrayed into
deeper deceit. It did seem to him rather hard that, merely because he
had wanted the roan badly enough to--er--exercise a little diplomacy
in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like
that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that
contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was
that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows on that
horse. He had never known him to make a crooked move, and he had
ridden beside him all one summer and had seen him in all places and
under all possible conditions. He was a dandy cow-horse, and dead
gentle; all this talk made him tired. Andy had forgotten that he
himself had started the talk.

Coleman went often to the corral when the horses were in, and looked
at the blue roan. Later he rode on to other ranches where he had heard
were bad horses, and left the roan for further consideration. When he
was gone, Andy breathed freer and put his mind to the coming con