Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/147

 "Purty country in there along that crick."

"Fine. Grass shoe-top high over hundreds of acres, a crop of hay coming on there that would winter a lot of sheep, and not a head of cattle or a sheep in sight. Galloway seems to be hoggin' more than he can use."

"He winters up there. So you was in there lookin' around, heh? What're you figgerin' on? Tryin' to bust up his combination?"

"Nothing very startling, I guess. I just wanted to see what it was like. I'm on my way down to Jasper. Wondered if you wanted to sell a horse?"

"Might as well," said Clemmons; "might as well begin to clean up and make ready to leave." His end was in sight there, anyhow; he was a whipped man. In spite of this gloomy talk, Rawlins found the old codger shrewd enough at a bargain. He had a line of antique specimens, of about his own period, it appeared, which he tried to work off first. Seeing that he was not dealing with a man who never had met a horse face to face before, the sheepman produced a younger animal, but a scrawny one, wild and devilish, that jumped as if socked with a branding-iron when a hand was laid on it.

Unpromising as it was, Rawlins drove a bargain for the creature, a ratty, bald old saddle going with it. He considered himself pretty well skinned when he gave up thirty-five dollars for the outfit. Clemmons said the horse's name was Graball. He admonished Rawlins to be kind to him, with a watery look about the eyes as if it wrung his smoky old heart to let it go. Rawlins promised to be as kind as Graball deserved,