“We passed the hat in the interest of modern science, and we fenced off a place in the corral and set up a school of ostypathy in our midst.  Doc, he done some things that seemed to us right strange at first.  He gets Pinto up in one corner and takes him by the ear, and tries to break his neck, with his foot in the middle of his back.  Then he goes around on the other side and does the same thing.  He hammers him up one side and down the other, and works him and wiggles him till us cow punchers thought he was goin’ to scatter him around worse than Cassybianca on the burnin’ deck after the exploshun.  My experience, though, is that it’s right hard to shake a horse to pieces.  Pinto, he stood it all right.  And say, he got so gentle, with that tall blinder between his eyes, that he’d ‘a’ followed off a sheepherder.

“All this time we was throwin’ oats a-plenty into Pinto, rubbin’ his legs down, and gettin’ him used to a saddle a little bit lighter than a regular cow saddle.  Doc, he allows he can see his eyes straightenin’ out every day.  ‘I ought to have a year on this job,’ says he; ’but these here is urgent times.’

“I should say they was urgent.  The time for the county fair at Socorro was comin’ right clost.

“At last we takes the old Hasenberg Pinto over to Socorro to the fair, and there we enters him in everything from the front to the back of the racin’ book.  My friends, you would ‘a’ shed tears of pity to see them folks fall down over theirselves tryin’ to hand us their money against old Pinto.  There was horses there from Montanny to Arizony, all kinds of fancy riders, and money—­oh, law!  Us Bar T fellers, we took everything offered—­put up everything we had, down to our spurs.  Then we’d go off by ourselves and look at each other solemn.  We was gettin’ rich so quick we felt almost scared.

“There come nigh to bein’ a little shootin’ just before the horses was gettin’ ready for the first race, which was for a mile and a half.  We led old Pinto out, and some feller standin’ by, he says, sarcastic like, ‘What’s that I see comin’; a snow-plough?’ Him alludin’ to the single blinder on Pinto’s nose.

“‘I reckon you’ll think it’s been snowin’ when we get through,’ says Tom Redmond to him, scornful.  ’The best thing you can do is to shut up, unless you’ve got a little money you want to contribute to the Bar T festerval.’  But about then they hollered for the horses to go to the post, and there wasn’t no more talk.

“Pinto he acted meek and humble, just like a glass-eyed angel, and the starter didn’t have no trouble with him at all.  At last he got them all off, so clost together one saddle blanket would have done for the whole bunch.  Say, man, that was a fine start.

“Along with oats and ostypathy, old Pinto he’d come out on the track that day just standin’ on the edges of his feet, he was feelin’ that fine.  We put Jose Santa Maria Trujillo, one of our lightest boys, up on Pinto for to ride him.  Now a Greaser ain’t got no sense.  It was that fool boy Jose that busted up modern science on the Bar T.