lambkins born to a tiger.

"Pretty soon the ranch buildings was all complete and varnished and
polished, like you seen to-day, and the family moved in with all kinds
of uniformed servants that looked unhappy and desperate. They had a
pained butler in a dress suit that never once set foot outside the house
the whole five months they was here. He'd of been thought too gloomy for
good taste, even at a funeral. He had me nervous every time I went
there, thinking any minute he was going to break down and sob.

"And this lady loses no time making companions of her children that
didn't want to be. First she tried to make 'em chase steers on
horseback. A fact! That was one of her ideas of ranch life. When I asked
her what she was going to stock her ranch with she said didn't I have
some good heads of stock I could sell her? And I said yes, I had some
good heads, and showed her a bunch of my thoroughbreds, thinking none
but the best would satisfy her. She looked 'em over with a glittering
eye and said they was too fat to run well. I didn't get her. I said it
was true; I hadn't raised 'em for speed. I said I didn't have an animal
on the place that could hit better than three miles an hour, and not
that for long. I cheerfully admitted I didn't have a thoroughbred on
the place that wouldn't be a joke on any track in the country; but I
wanted to know what of it.

"'How do you get any sport out of them,' demands the lady, 'if they
can't give you a jolly good chase?'

"That's what she asked me in so many words. I says, does she aim to
breed racing cattle? And she says, where will the sport be with
creatures all out of condition with fat, like mine are? It took me about
ten minutes to get her idea, it was that heinous or criminal. When I did
get it I sent her to old Safety First; and what does she do but buy a
herd of twenty yearling steers from the old crook! Scrubby little runts
that had been raised out in the hills and was all bone and muscle, and
any one of 'em able to do a mile in four minutes flat, I guess.

"Old Safety was tickled to death at first when he put off this refuse on
her at a price not much more than double what they would have brought in
a tanyard, which was all they'd ever be good for except bone fertilizer,
mebbe; but he was sick unto death when he found they was just what she
wanted, the skinnier the better and he could have got anything he asked
for 'em. He says to me afterward why don't I train some of mi