“Disappointed!  Had his mouth fixed for a million or so, and didn’t get it; couldn’t stand the gaff; made him ugly,” said Zurich slowly.  “And when Dewing is ugly he is unbearable; absolutely the limit.”

“Isn’t he?” agreed Eric in disgust.  “Enough to make a man turn honest.”

CHAPTER VI

Stanley Mitchell topped the last rise in Morning Gate Pass in the late afternoon.  Cobre Basin spread deep and wide before him, ruddy in the low sun; Cobre town and mines, on his left, loomed dim and misshapen in the long dark shadows of the hills.

Awguan, top horse and foreman of Stanley’s mount, swung pitapat down the winding pass at a brisk fox trot.  The gallop, as a road gait, is frowned upon in the cow countries as immature and wasteful of equine energy.

He passed Loder’s Folly, high above the trail—­gray, windowless, and forlorn; the trail dipped into the cool shadows, twisted through the mazy deeps of Wait-a-Bit Canon, clambered zigzag back to the sunlit slope, and curved round the hillsides to join, in long levels, the wood roads on the northern slopes.

As he turned into the level, Stanley’s musings were broken in upon by a sudden prodigious clatter.  Looking up, he became aware of a terror, rolling portentous down the flinty ridge upon him; a whirlwind streak of billowed dust, shod with sparks, tipped by a hurtling color yet unknown to man; and from the whirlwind issued grievous words.

Awguan leaped forward.

Bounding over boulders or from them, flashing through catclaw and ocatillo, the appearance swooped and fell, the blend disjoined and shaped to semblance of a very small red pony bearing a very small blue boy.  The pony’s small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins; the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs.  Making the curve at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of breathless equipoise, they took the trail.

Awguan thundered after.  Stanley bent over, pelted by flying pebbles and fragments of idle words.

Small chance to overhaul the prodigy on that ribbed and splintered hill; Awguan held the sidelong trail at the red pony’s heels.  They dipped to cross an arroyo; Stan lifted his head and shouted: 

“Fall off in the sand!”

“Damnfido!” wailed the blue boy.

Sand flashed in rainbow arches against Awguan’s brown face—­he shut his eyes against it; they turned up the hill beyond.  A little space ahead showed free of bush or boulder.  Awguan took the hillside below the trail, lowered his head, laid his ears back, and bunched his mighty muscles.  He drew alongside; leaning far over, heel to cantle, Stan threw his arm about the small red neck, and dragged the red pony to a choking stand.  The small blue boy slipped to earth, twisted the soft bridle rein once and again to a miraculous double half-hitch about the red pony’s jaw, and tightened it with a jerk.