he sent word to you that he'd let you know soon as there is a change."

"Much obliged."

Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his
undesirable society upon him.

That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was
no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he
recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad
as one's fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least.
Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered
to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.

Cowpunchers usually rode in couples. Bob learned next morning that he was
paired with Dud. They were to comb the Crooked Wash country.

CHAPTER XIX

DUD QUALIFIES AS COURT JESTER

It was still dark when Dud Hollister and Bob Dillon waded through the
snow to the corral and saddled their horses.

They jogged across the mesa through the white drifts.

Bob's pony stumbled into a burrow, but pulled out again without damage.

In the years when cattle first came to the Rio Blanco the danger from
falls was greater than it is now, even if the riding had not been harder.
A long thick grass often covered the badger holes.

"How does a fellow look out for badger and prairie-dog holes?" Bob asked
his companion as they jogged along at a road gait. "I mean when he's
chasin' dogies across a hill on the jump."

"He don't," Dud answered ungrammatically but promptly. "His bronc 'tends
to that. If you try to guide you're sure enough liable to take a fall."

"But when the hole's covered with grass?"

"You gotta take a chance," Dud said. "They're sure-footed, these
cowponies are. A fellow gets to thinkin' they can't fall. Then down he
goes. He jumps clear if he can an' lights loose."

"And if he can't?"

"He's liable to get stove up. I seen five waddies yesterday in Bear Cat
with busted legs or arms. Doc's fixin' 'em up good as new. In a week or
two they'll be ridin' again."

Bob had seen those same crippled cowboys and he could not quite get them
out of his mind. He knew of two punchers killed within the year from
falls.

"Ridin' for a dogie outfit ain't no sin-cure, as Blister told you while
he was splicin' you 'n' Miss Tolliver," Dud went on. "It's a man-size
job. There's ol' Charley Mason now. He's had his ribs stove in, busted an
arm, shot hisself by accident, got rheumatism, had his nose bit off by a
r