ted to cross. So Silver brought him safely down that hill where
even the Happy Family would have hesitated to ride unless the need was
urgent.

He could not go right up over the next hill--there was a rock ledge that
was higher than his head when he sat on Silver. He went down a narrow
gulch--ah, an awfully narrow gulch! Sometimes he was afraid Silver
was too fat to squeeze through; but Silver always did squeeze through
somehow. And still there were no brakes growing anywhere. Just
choke-cherry trees, and service-berries, and now and then a little flat
filled with cottonwoods and willows--familiar trees and bushes that he
had known all his six years of life.

So the Kid went on and on, over hills or around hills or down along the
side of hill. But he did not find the Happy Family, and he did not find
the brakes. He found cattle that had the Flying U brand--they had a
comfortable, homey look. One bunch he drove down a wide coulee, hazing
them out of the brush and yelling "HY-AH!" at them, just the way the
Happy Family yelled. He thought maybe these were the cattle the Happy
Family were looking for; so he drove them ahead of him and didn't let
one break back on him and he was the happiest Kid in all Montana with
these range cattle, that had the Flying U brand, galloping awkwardly
ahead of him down that big coulee.

CHAPTER 16. "A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER"

The hills began to look bigger, and kind of chilly and blue in the
deep places. The Kid wished that he could find some of the boys. He was
beginning to get hungry, and he had long ago begun to get tired. But he
was undismayed, even when he heard a coyote yap-yap-yapping up a brushy
canyon. It might be that he would have to camp out all night. The
Kid had loved those cowboy yarns where the teller--who was always the
hero--had been caught out somewhere and had been compelled to make a
"dry camp." His favorite story of that type was the story of how Happy
Jack had lost his clothes and had to go naked through the breaks. It was
not often that he could make Happy Jack tell him that story--never when
the other boys were around. And there were other times; when Pink had
got lost, down in the breaks, and had found a cabin just--in--TIME, with
Irish sick inside and a blizzard just blowing outside, and they were mad
at each other and wouldn't talk, and all they had to eat was one weenty,
teenty snow-bird, till the yearling heifer came and Pink killed it and
they had beefsteak