Isn't he?" agreed Eric in disgust. "Enough to make a man turn honest."

CHAPTER VI

Stanley Mitchell topped the last rise in Morning Gate Pass in the late
afternoon. Cobre Basin spread deep and wide before him, ruddy in the low
sun; Cobre town and mines, on his left, loomed dim and misshapen in the
long dark shadows of the hills.

Awguan, top horse and foreman of Stanley's mount, swung pitapat down the
winding pass at a brisk fox trot. The gallop, as a road gait, is frowned
upon in the cow countries as immature and wasteful of equine energy.

He passed Loder's Folly, high above the trail--gray, windowless, and
forlorn; the trail dipped into the cool shadows, twisted through the mazy
deeps of Wait-a-Bit Canon, clambered zigzag back to the sunlit slope, and
curved round the hillsides to join, in long levels, the wood roads on the
northern slopes.

As he turned into the level, Stanley's musings were broken in upon by a
sudden prodigious clatter. Looking up, he became aware of a terror,
rolling portentous down the flinty ridge upon him; a whirlwind streak of
billowed dust, shod with sparks, tipped by a hurtling color yet unknown
to man; and from the whirlwind issued grievous words.

Awguan leaped forward.

Bounding over boulders or from them, flashing through catclaw and
ocatillo, the appearance swooped and fell, the blend disjoined and
shaped to semblance of a very small red pony bearing a very small blue
boy. The pony's small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was
against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins;
the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs. Making the curve
at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of
breathless equipoise, they took the trail.

Awguan thundered after. Stanley bent over, pelted by flying pebbles and
fragments of idle words.

Small chance to overhaul the prodigy on that ribbed and splintered hill;
Awguan held the sidelong trail at the red pony's heels. They dipped to
cross an arroyo; Stan lifted his head and shouted:

"Fall off in the sand!"

"Damnfido!" wailed the blue boy.

Sand flashed in rainbow arches against Awguan's brown face--he shut his
eyes against it; they turned up the hill beyond. A little space ahead
showed free of bush or boulder. Awguan took the hillside below the trail,
lowered his head, laid his ears back, and bunched his mighty muscles. He
drew alongside; leaning far over, h