with his eye on the horses and his
foot on the crippled brake. A dry gully was coming, and no room to turn.
The farther side of it was terraced with rock. We should simply fall
backward, if we did not fall forward first. He steered the horses
straight over, and just at the bottom swung them, with astonishing
skill, to the right along the hard-baked mud. They took us along the bed
up to the head of the gully, and through a thicket of quaking asps. The
light trees bent beneath our charge and bastinadoed the wagon as it went
over them. But their branches enmeshed the horses' legs, and we came to
a harmless standstill among a bower of leaves.

I looked at the trustworthy man, and smiled vaguely. He considered me
for a moment.

"I reckon," said he, "you're feelin' about halfway between 'Oh, Lord!'
and 'Thank God!'"

"That's quite it," said I, as he got down on the ground.

"Nothing's broke," said he, after a searching examination. And he
indulged in a true Virginian expletive. "Gentlemen, hush!" he murmured
gently, looking at me with his grave eyes; "one time I got pretty near
scared. You, Buck," he continued, "some folks would beat you now till
yu'd be uncertain whether yu' was a hawss or a railroad accident. I'd do
it myself, only it wouldn't cure yu'."

I now told him that I supposed he had saved both our lives. But he
detested words of direct praise. He made some grumbling rejoinder, and
led the horses out of the thicket. Buck, he explained to me, was a good
horse, and so was Muggins. Both of them generally meant well, and that
was the Judge's reason for sending them to meet me. But these broncos
had their off days. Off days might not come very often; but when the
humor seized a bronco, he had to have his spree. Buck would now behave
himself as a horse should for probably two months. "They are just like
humans," the Virginian concluded.

Several cow-boys arrived on a gallop to find how many pieces of us were
left. We returned down the hill; and when we reached my trunk, it was
surprising to see the distance that our runaway had covered. My hat was
also found, and we continued on our way.

Buck and Muggins were patterns of discretion through the rest of the
mountains. I thought when we camped this night that it was strange Buck
should be again allowed to graze at large, instead of being tied to a
rope while we slept. But this was my ignorance. With the hard work that
he was gallantly doing, the horse needed more p