s he dodged.

"Yes. All he needs is a couple of punchers and a hoss-doctor and a
policeman to ride round with him and keep him out of trouble. He's no
account; never will be," growled Williams.

"I don't know, Brand. He's a mighty likely-looking and interesting
specimen. He's different. I kind of like him."

"Well, I don't. I ain't got time. He's always goin' to manufacture
trouble, when he don't come by it natural. He's got a kind eye, but no
brains behind it."

They mounted and rode up the hill, looking for breaks in the fences and
counting the colts, some of whom, luxuriously lazy in the heat of the
sun, stood with lowered heads, drowsing. Others, scattered about the
hillsides and in the arroyos, grazed nippingly at the sparse
bunch-grass, moving quickly from clump to clump.

The "blunder" colt seemed to find his own imbecilities sufficiently
entertaining, for he grazed alone.

The foreman's inspection terminated with the repairing of a break in the
fence inclosing the spring-hole, a small area of bog-land dotted with
hummocks of lush grass. Between the hummocks was a slimy, black ooze
that covered the bones of more than one unfortunate animal. The heavy,
ripe grass lent an appearance of stability, of solidity, to the
treacherous footing.

Williams and Collie reinforced the sagging posts with props of fallen
limbs and stones carried from the trail below. They piled brush where
the wire had parted, filling the opening with an almost impassable
barrier of twisted branches. Until the last rain, the spring-hole fence
had appeared solid--but one night of rain in the California hills can
work unimaginable changes in trail, stream-bed, or fence line.

"Get after that fence first thing in the morning," said Williams as he
unsaddled the pinto that afternoon. "I noticed the blunder colt followed
us up to the spring. If there's any way of gettin' bogged, he'll find
it, or invent a new way for himself."

The blunder colt's mischief-making amounted to absolute genius. There
was much of the enterprising puppy in his nature and in his methods. The
impulse which seemed to direct the extremely uneven tenor of his way
would have resolved itself orally into: "Do it--and then see what
happens!" He was not vicious, but brainlessly joyful in his mischief.

As the foreman and Collie disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, the
colt, who had watched them with absurdly stupid intensity, lowered his
head and nibbled indifferently