“Oh, all right!” She listened wistfully a moment to the now slightly dulled oratorio, then:  “Yes, Angus McDonald is his name; but there are two kinds of Scotch, and Angus is the other kind.  Of course he’s one of the big millionaires now, with money enough to blind any kind of a Scotchman, but he was the other kind even when he first come out to us, a good thirty years ago, without a cent.  He’s a kind of second or third cousin of mine by marriage or something—­I never could quite work it out—­and he’d learned his trade back in Ohio; but he felt that the East didn’t have any future to speak of, so he decided to come West.  He was a painter and grainer and kalsominer and paperhanger, that kind of thing—­a good, quiet boy about twenty-five, not saying much, chunky and slow-moving but sure, with a round Scotch head and a snub nose, and one heavy eyebrow that run clean across his face—­not cut in two like most are.

“He landed on the ranch and slowly looked things over and let on after a few days that he mebbe would be a cowboy on account of it taking him outdoors more than kalsomining would.  Lysander John was pretty busy, but he said all right, and gave him a saddle and bridle and a pair of bull pants and warned him about a couple of cinch-binders that he mustn’t try to ride or they would murder him.  And so one morning Angus asked a little bronch-squeezer we had, named Everett Sloan, to pick him out something safe to ride, and Everett done so.  Brought him up a nice old rope horse that would have been as safe as a supreme-court judge, but the canny Angus says:  ’No, none of your tricks now!  That beast has the very devil in his eye, and you wish to sit by and laugh your fool head off when he displaces me.’  ‘Is that so?’ says Everett.  ‘I suspect you,’ says Angus.  ‘I’ve read plentifully about the tricks of you cowlads.’  ‘Pick your own horse, then,’ says Everett.  ‘I’d better,’ says Angus, and picks one over by the corral gate that was asleep standing up, with a wisp of hay hanging out of his mouth like he’d been too tired to finish eating it.  ‘This steed is more to my eye,’ says Angus.  ’He’s old and withered and he has no evil ambitions.  But maybe I can wake him up.’  ‘Maybe you can,’ says Everett, ‘but are you dead sure you want to?’ Angus was dead sure.  ‘I shall thwart your murderous design,’ says he.  So Everett with a stung look helped him saddle this one.  He had his alibi all right, and besides, nothing ever did worry that buckaroo as long as his fingers wasn’t too cold to roll a cigarette.

“The beast was still asleep when Angus forked him.  Without seeming to wake up much he at once traded ends, poured Angus out of the saddle, and stacked him up in some mud that was providentially there—­mud soft enough to mire your shadow.  Angus got promptly up, landed a strong kick in the ribs of the outlaw which had gone to sleep again before he lit, shook hands warmly with Everett and says:  ’What does a man need with two trades anyway?  Good-bye!’