Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/122

110 with flappers on them, you can just shake a foot and scare your stock out," stated the dogmatic cowboy.

So Kenneth decided on taps, just as he had decided on the Cheyenne tree, as though his chief requirement was a machine for handling heavy cattle!

The latigos must be of belt leather and without buckles—effeminate devices for saving time—what if just as you had roped a steer the buckle should tear out! For the same important reason the stirrup leathers must be quadruple, three inches wide, of thick stock, and must be laced with thongs. To change the length was a half hour's job, whereas a buckle will permit of their being raised or lowered in a jiffy—but consider again that enraged and ensnared steer! He picked out a cincha that was eight inches wide, woven of horsehair in a white and black pattern, with a tassel or tuft sticking down in the centre of it.

"That's what I call a real cinch," the cowboy had cried. "That'd hold anything!"

This new friend surveyed Kenneth's completed specifications attentively.

"That'd make you a saddle you wouldn't need to suspicion nohow," he pronounced.

Kenneth had already picked from the dozen beautiful made-up saddles in the shop the carved design that pleased him most. Of course this super-saddle must be carved! And that did not mean any of your cheap stamped stuff, but deep rich hand carving with simple tools—an almost lost art to-day. He offered his results to Paige and demanded a price.

"I got pretty near what you want already," said Jim, leading the way to a saddle in the window.

But the saddle in the window differed slightly, and Kenneth had so intently brooded over every detail that difference was fatal. Jim Paige promised to figure on it; and then, of course, laid the paper one side. Jim was always a very busy man. He could work and talk at the same time, but he could not work and figure at the same time. Every afternoon for nearly a week Kenneth demanded the figures of the estimate; and every afternoon Jim Paige confessed that he just sort of hadn't got around to it yet.