dance of
light. We unrolled a bed to serve as a table, sat down on it Indian
fashion, and as fast as one seat was vacated there was a man ready to
fill it, for we were impatient for our turns in the game. The talk
turned on an accident which had happened that afternoon. While we were
crossing the North Fork of the Canadian, Bob Blades attempted to ride
out of the river below the crossing, when his horse bogged down. He
instantly dismounted, and his horse after floundering around scrambled
out and up the bank, but with a broken leg. Our foreman had ridden up
and ordered the horse unsaddled and shot, to put him out of his
suffering.

While waiting our turns, the accident to the horse was referred to
several times, and finally Blades, who was sitting in the game, turned
to us who were lounging around the fire, and asked, "Did you all
notice that look he gave me as I was uncinching the saddle? If he had
been human, he might have told what that look meant. Good thing he was
a horse and couldn't realize."

From then on, the yarning and conversation was strictly _horse_.

"It was always a mystery to me," said Billy Honeyman, "how a Mexican
or Indian knows so much more about a horse than any of us. I have seen
them trail a horse across a country for miles, riding in a long lope,
with not a trace or sign visible to me. I was helping a horseman once
to drive a herd of horses to San Antonio from the lower Rio Grande
country. We were driving them to market, and as there were no
railroads south then, we had to take along saddle horses to ride home
on after disposing of the herd. We always took favorite horses which
we didn't wish to sell, generally two apiece for that purpose. This
time, when we were at least a hundred miles from the ranch, a Mexican,
who had brought along a pet horse to ride home, thought he wouldn't
hobble this pet one night, fancying the animal wouldn't leave the
others. Well, next morning his pet was missing. We scoured the country
around and the trail we had come over for ten miles, but no horse. As
the country was all open, we felt positive he would go back to the
ranch.

"Two days later and about forty miles higher up the road, the Mexican
was riding in the lead of the herd, when suddenly he reined in his
horse, throwing him back on his haunches, and waved for some of us to
come to him, never taking his eyes off what he saw in the road. The
owner was riding on one point of the herd and I on the other. We