"Well, the son of a gun!" muttered Creede, as he thundered down the trail after him. "Durned if he can't ride!"
There are men in every cow camp who can rope and shoot, but the man who can ride a wild horse can hold up his head with the best of them. No matter what his race or station if he will crawl a "snake" and stay with him there is always room on the wagon for his blankets; his fame will spread quickly from camp to camp, and the boss will offer to raise him when he shows up for his time. Jefferson Creede's face was all aglow when he finally rode up beside Hardy; he grinned triumphantly upon horse and man as if they had won money for him in a race; and Hardy, roused at last from his reserve, laughed back out of pure joy in his possessions.
"How's that for a horse?" he cried, raising his voice above the thud of hoofs. "I have to turn him loose at first--'fraid he'll learn to pitch if I hold him in--he's never bucked with me yet!"
"You bet--he's a snake!" yelled Creede, hammering along on his broad-chested roan. "Where'd you git 'im?"
"Tom Fulton's ranch," responded Hardy, reining his horse in and patting him on the neck. "Turned in three months' pay and broke him myself, to boot. I'll let you try him some day, when he's gentled."
"Well, if I wasn't so big 'n' heavy I'd take you up on that," said Creede, "but I'm just as much obliged, all the same. I don't claim to be no bronco-buster now, but I used to ride some myself when I was a kid. But say, the old judge has got some good horses runnin' on the upper range,--if you want to keep your hand in,--thirty or forty head of 'em, and wild as hawks. There's some sure-enough wild horses too, over on the Peaks, that belong to any man that can git his rope onto 'em--how would that strike you? We've been tryin' for years to catch the black stallion that leads 'em."
Try as he would to minimize this exaggerated estimate of his prowess as a horse-tamer Hardy was unable to make his partner admit that he was anything short of a real "buster," and before they had been on the trail an hour Creede had made all the plans for a big gather of wild horses after the round-up.
"I had you spotted for a sport from the start," he said, puffing out his chest at the memory of his acumen, "but, by jingo, I never thought I was drawin' a bronco-twister. Well, now, I saw you crawl that horse this mornin', and I guess I know the real thing by this time. Say," he said, turning confidentially in his saddle, "if it's none of my business you can say so, but what did you do to that bit?"