ange-horse, you idiot, and a range-saddle. I did ride some on a
fancy-gaited steed with a saddle that resembled a porus plaster and
stirrups like a lady's bracelet; it didn't fill the aching void a little
bit."

"Well, maybe yuh won't feel any aching void out here," he said, "but if
yuh follow round-up this season you'll sure have plenty of other brands of
ache."

I told him I'd be right with them at the finish, and he needn't to worry
any about me. Pretty soon I'll show you how well I kept my word. We rode
and rode, and handed out our experiences to each other, and got to
Pochette's that night. I couldn't help remembering the last time I'd been
over that trail, and how rocky I felt about things. Frosty said he wasn't
worried about that walk of his into Pochette's growing dim in his memory,
either.

Well, then, we got to Pochette's--I think I have remarked the fact. And at
Pochette's, just unharnessing his team, limped my friend of White Divide,
old King. Funny how a man's view-point will change when there's a girl
cached somewhere in the background. Not even the memory of Shylock's
stiffening limbs could bring me to a mood for war. On the contrary, I felt
more like rushing up and asking him how were all the folks, and when did
Beryl expect to come home. But not Frosty; he drove phlegmatically up so
that there was just comfortable space for a man to squeeze between our rig
and King's, hopped out, and began unhooking the traces as if there wasn't
a soul but us around. King was looping up the lines of his team, and he
glared at us across the backs of his horses as if we were--well,
caterpillars at a picnic and he was a girl with nice clothes and a fellow
and a set of nerves. His next logical move would be to let out a squawk
and faint, I thought; in which case I should have started in to do the
comforting, with a dipper of water from the pump. He didn't faint, though.

I walked around and let down the neck-yoke, and his eyes followed me with
suspicion. "Hello, Mr. King," I sang out in a brazen attempt to hypnotize
him into the belief we were friends. "How's the world using you, these
days?"

"Huh!" grunted the unhypnotized one, deep in his chest.

Frosty straightened up and looked at me queerly; he said afterward that he
couldn't make out whether I was trying to pull off a gun fight, or had
gone dippy.

But I was only in the last throes of exuberance at being in the country at
all, and I didn't give a damn what Ki