was
nothing about them to cheer him. The trees were lost in shadows and all
the slopes seemed quite barren of life. He vented a little burst of
anger by yanking at the rein of the off horse, a dirty gray.

"Giddap, Kitty, damn your eyes!"

The mare jumped, struck a stone with a fore foot, and stumbled heavily.
Townsend straightened her out again with an expert hand and cursed.

"Of all the no-good hosses I ever see," he said, inviting the stranger
to share in his just wrath, "this Kitty is the outbeatingest, no good
rascal. Git on, fool."

He clapped the reins along her back, and puffed his disgust.

"And yet she has points. Now, I ask you, did you ever see a truer
Steeldust? Look at that high croup and that straight rump. Look at them
hips, I say, and a chest to match 'em. But they ain't any heart in her.
Take a hoss through and through," he went on oracularly, "they're pretty
much like men, mostly, and if a man ain't got the heart inside, it don't
make no difference how big around the chest he measures."

Ben Connor had leaned forward, studying the mare.

"Your horse would be all right in her place," he said. "Of course, she
won't do up here in the mountains."

Like any true Westerner of the mountain-desert, Jack Townsend would far
rather have been discovered with his hand in the pocket of another man
than be observed registering surprise. He looked carefully ahead until
his face was straight again. Then he turned.

"Where d'you make out her place to be?" he asked carelessly.

"Down below," said the other without hesitation, and he waved his arm.
"Down in soft, sandy irrigation country she'd be a fine animal."

Jack Townsend blinked. "You know her?" he asked.

The other shook his head.

"Well, damn my soul!" breathed the hotel proprietor. "This beats me.
Maybe you read a hoss's mind, partner?"

Connor shrugged his shoulders, but Townsend no longer took offense at
the taciturnity of his companion; he spoke now in a lower confiding
voice which indicated an admission of equality.

"You're right. They said she was good, and she was good! I seen her run;
I saddled her up and rode her thirty miles through sand that would of
broke the heart of anything but a Steeldust, and she come through
without battin' an eye. But when I got her up here she didn't do no
good. But"--he reverted suddenly to his original surprise--"how'd you
know her? Recognize the brand, maybe?"

"By her trot," said the other, and he loo