ks
would have to be replaced with new ones--or at least reshod with old
boot-soles. The tongue was cracked, too; that had been done last winter
when Luck was producing The Phantom Herd and had sent old Dave Wiswell
down a rocky hillside with half-broken bronks harnessed to the wagon, in
a particularly dramatic scene. Applehead went grumblingly in search of
some baling wire to wrap the tongue. He had been terribly excited and
full of enthusiasm for the picture at the time the tongue was cracked,
but now he looked upon it merely as a vital weakness in his roundup
outfit. A new tongue would mean delay; and delay, in his present mood,
was tragedy.

He couldn't find any old baling wire, though he had long been accustomed
to tangling his feet in snarled bunches of it when he went forth in
the dark after a high wind. Until now he had not observed its unwonted
absence from the yard. For a long while he had not needed any wire to
mend things, because Luck had attended to everything about the ranch,
and if anything needed mending he had set one of the Happy Family at the
task.

His search led him out beyond the corrals in the little dry wash that
sometimes caught and held what the high winds brought rolling that way.
The wash was half filled with tumble-weed, so that Applehead was forced
to get down into it and kick the weeds aside to see if there was
any wire lodged beneath. His temper did not sweeten over the task,
especially since he found nothing that he wanted.

Annie-Many-Ponies, riding surreptitiously up the dry wash--meaning to
come out in a farther gully and so approach the corral from the west
instead of from the east--came upon Applehead quite unexpectedly. She
stopped and eyed him aslant from under her level, finely marked brows,
and her eyes lightened with relief when she saw that Applehead looked
more startled than she had felt. Indeed, Applehead had been calling Luck
uncomplimentary names for cleaning the place of everything a man might
need in a hurry, and he was ashamed of himself.

"Can't find a foot of danged wire on the danged place!" Applehead kicked
a large, tangled bunch of weeds under the very nose of the horse which
jumped sidewise. "Never seen such a maniac for puttin' things where a
feller can't find 'em, as what Luck is." He was not actually speak
ing to Annie-Many-Ponies--or if he was he did not choose to point his
remarks by glancing at her.

"Wagalexa Conka, he heap careful for things belong w