y and make money. That's what
I'm a-doin', if you want to take me up."

"I'll take a look at him, Jim."

Jim got up with eagerness, and went to fetch a saddle and bridle from
under the wagon. The others came into the transaction with lively
interest. Only Taterleg edged round to Lambert, and whispered with his
head turned away to look like innocence:

"Watch out for him--he's a bal'-faced hyeeny!"

They trooped off to the corral, which was a temporary enclosure made of
wire run among the little pines. Jim brought the horse out. It stood
tamely enough to be saddled, with head drooping indifferently, and
showed no deeper interest and no resentment over the operation of
bridling, Jim talking all the time he worked, like the faker that he
was, to draw off a too-close inspection of his wares.

"Old Whetstone ain't much to look at," he said, "and as I told you,
Mister, he ain't got no fancy gait; but he can bust the middle out of
the breeze when he lays out a straight-ahead run. Ain't a horse on this
range can touch his tail when old Whetstone throws a ham into it and
lets out his stren'th."

"He looks like he might go some," Lambert commented in the vacuous way
of a man who felt that he must say something, even though he didn't know
anything about it.

Whetstone was rather above the stature of the general run of range
horses, with clean legs and a good chest. But he was a hammer-headed,
white-eyed, short-maned beast, of a pale water-color yellow, like an old
dish. He had a beaten-down, bedraggled, and dispirited look about him,
as if he had carried men's burdens beyond his strength for a good while,
and had no heart in him to take the road again. He had a scoundrelly way
of rolling his eyes to watch all that went on about him without turning
his head.

Jim girthed him and cinched him, soundly and securely, for no matter who
was pitched off and smashed up in that ride, he didn't want the saddle
to turn and be ruined.

"Well, there he stands, Duke, and saddle and bridle goes with him if
you're able to ride him. I'll be generous; I won't go half-way with you;
I'll be whole hog or none. Saddle and bridle goes with Whetstone, all a
free gift, if you can ride him, Duke. I want to start you up right."

It was a safe offer, taking all precedent into account, for no man ever
had ridden Whetstone, not even his owner. The beast was an outlaw of the
most pronounced type, with a repertory of tricks, calculated to get a
man o