Page:Patches (1928).pdf/42



OUR years have now elapsed since that eventful day when Hank Brodie had engaged in that desperate running fight with the Killer, in which through sheer pluck and good shooting he had saved the life of Kentucky Bell's little colt. If one had seen that small horse lashed to Hank's saddle as he toted him home, and could also have seen the eleven hundred pound gelding which now pranced about over the ranch, free as the winds that blew, it would have been another striking reminder of the adage, "Great oaks from little acorns grow."

Never since that day when Hank had unbound the small horse and set him upon his feet before the ranch corral had he been haltered or bridled. A ranch mare which had lost her own colt the day before, had at once adopted the forlorn little horse and everything had gone on just as though he had not lost his own mother.

It is general practice among ranchmen not to break a colt until he is four years old, when he is supposed to have reached his full size and strength. Even the breaking that he gets is not the long painstaking course