ulwarks of his emotion. You, my younger brethren of
the great towns, when you knock your heads against some corner of the
world and go a-bawling to your mother's petticoat, will never know what
deeps of consolation are to be gotten out of hugging a horse when one's
heart is aching.

I wondered if it were all entirely true, or whether I should knock my
elbow against something and wake up. We were on the north bank of the
Valley River, with every head of those six hundred steers. Out there
they were, strung along the road, shaking their wet coats like a lot of
woolly dogs, and the afternoon sun wavering about on their shiny backs.
And there was Ump with his thumbs against the fetlocks of the Bay Eagle,
and Jud trying to get his copper skin into the half-dried shirt, and the
hugged El Mahdi staring away at the brown hills as though he were
everlastingly bored.

I climbed up into the saddle to keep from executing a fiddler's jig, and
thereby proving that I suffered deeply from the curable disease of
youth.

We started the drove across the hills toward Roy's tavern, Jud at his
place in front of the steers, walking in the road with the Cardinal's
bridle under his arm, and Ump behind, while El Mahdi strayed through the
line of cattle to keep them moving. The steers trailed along the road
between the rows of rail fence running in zigzag over the country to the
north. I sat sidewise in my big saddle dangling my heels.

There were long shadows creeping eastward in the cool hollows when we
came to the shop of old Christian the blacksmith. I was moving along in
front of the drove, fingering El Mahdi's mane and whistling lustily, and
I squared him in the crossroads to turn the plodding cattle down toward
Roy's tavern. I noticed that the door of the smith's shop was closed and
the smoke creeping in a thin line out of the mud top of the chimney, but
I did not stop to inquire if the smith were about his work. I held no
resentment against the man. He had doubtless cut the cable, as Ump had
said, but his provocation had been great.

The settlement was now made fair, skin for skin, as the devil put it
once upon a time. I whistled away and counted the bullocks as they went
strolling by me, indicating each fellow with my finger. Presently Ump
came at the tail of the drove and pulled up the Bay Eagle under the tall
hickories.

"Well," he said, "the old shikepoke must be snoozin'."

"It's pretty late in the day," said I.

"He lost a