in' fast, anyways."

"Didn't you ever really care for a horse?" queried Pan.

"Me? Hell no! I've been kicked in the stummick--bit on the ear--piled
onto the mud--drug in the dust too darn often."

"You'll admit, though, that there are some fine horses among these?"
asked Pan earnestly.

"Wal, Pan, to stop kiddin' you, now an' then a fellar sees a real hoss
among them broomies. But shore them boys are the hard ones to ketch."

The last of Blinky's remark forced Pan's observation upon the
cardinally important point--the lay of the land. A million wild horses
in sight would be of no marketable value if they could not be trapped.
So he bent his keen gaze here and there, up and down the valley, across
to the far side, and upon the steep wall near by.

"Blink, see that deep wash running down the valley? It looks a good
deal closer to the far side. That's a break in the valley floor all
right. It may be a wonderful help to us, and it may ruin our chances."

"Reckon we cain't tell much from heah. Thet's where the water runs,
when there is any. Bet it's plumb dry now."

"We'll ride out presently and see. But I'm almost sure it's a deep
wide wash, with steep walls. Impassable! And by golly, if that's
so--you're a rich cowboy."

"Haw! Haw! Gosh, the way you sling words around."

"Now let's work along this ridge, down to the point where Dad went.
Wasn't he funny?"

"He's shore full of ginger. Wal, I reckon he's perked up since you
come."

Brush and cactus, jumbles of sharp rocks, thickets of scrub oak and
dumps of dwarf cedars, all matted along the narrow hog-back, as Blinky
called it, made progress slow and tedious. No cowboy ever climbed and
walked so well as he rode. At length, however, Pan and Blinky arrived
at the extreme end of the capelike bluff. It stood higher than their
first lookout.

Pan, who arrived at a vantage point ahead of Blinky, let out a
stentorian yell. Whereupon his companion came running.

"Hey, what's eatin' you?" he panted. "Rattlesnakes or wild hosses?"

"Look!" exclaimed Pan, waving his hand impressively.

The steep yellow slope opposite them, very close at the point where the
bluff curved in, stretched away almost to the other side of the valley.
Indeed it constituted the southern wall of the valley, and was broken
only by the narrow pass below where the cowboys stood, and another
wider break at the far end. From this point the wash that had puzzled
Pan proved to