Whenever he should return to the Panhandle, bearing Mr. Masterson’s hair upon his bridle-rein, the Tomcat foresaw how his status as one of iron-bound fortitude would be thereby and instantly fixed. He would be placed in the deadly foreground with such worthies as Doc Holiday, Shotgun Collins, Curly Bill and Soapy Smith. Poets would make verses about him as they had about the sainted Samuel Bass, dance-hall maidens would sing his glory in quavering quatrains. Thus dreamed the Tomcat on the banks of the Canadian as he lay by a Turkey Track campfire, while his comrades declaimed of Mr. Masterson and the sorrowful taking off of Messrs. Wagner and Walker, aforesaid. It was the Tomcat’s vision of fame; rude, bloody, criminal, but natural for the man and the day and the land it grew among.
It was in the hot middle hours of the afternoon. The Tomcat had come into camp bringing five cows with their unmarked offspring—this was the spring round-up. The five cows with their bawling children were thrown into the general bunch, which would start next day for the branding pen.
Having gotten a mouthful at the grub-wagon the Tomcat thoughtfully walked his tired bronco towards the band of ponies which the horse-hustler was holding in the bottom grass that bordered the Canadian. There were eight riders with this particular outfit. Wherefore the band of ponies counted about sixty head, for each cowboy employs from seven to ten personal ponies in his labours and rides down three a day.
The Tomcat’s pregnant purpose formed the night before was in no sort abated; it had grown more clear and strong with the hours. It looked sensibly feasible, too, as all things do when miles and weeks away. The Tomcat was wholly decided; he would ride to Dodge and collect the hair of the offensive Mr. Masterson. Likewise, since the idea improved upon him pleasantly, he would start at once.
In and out among the grazing ponies wound the Tomcat. At last he discovered what he sought. He pitched the loop of his rope over the head of a little bay, with four black legs and an eye like the full-blown moon.
This pony had name for speed and bottom. He had come from the ranges of the Triangle-dot, whose ponies, as all the cow-world knows, have in them a streak of the thoroughbred. The one roped by the Tomcat, carrying a thirty-pound saddle and a hundred-and-fifty-pound man, could put one hundred even miles behind him between dark and dark. He had never tasted anything better than mother’s milk and grass and would have drawn back and hollyhocked his nostrils at an ear of yellow corn as though that vegetable were a rattlesnake.
As the Tomcat was shifting his saddle from the weary one to the pony freshly caught the horse-hustler came riding out from the shadow of a cottonwood.
“I wouldn’t be in your saddle,” observed the horse-hustler to the Tomcat, busy over his girths, “for the price of fifty steers if Jack Cook crosses up with you on his little Shylock hoss.” The name of the bay pony was the name of Shakespeare’s Jew.
Upon a round-up a cowpony has two proprietors. His title, doubtless, is vested in the ranch whose brand he wears. Body and soul, however, he belongs to that cowboy to whom he is told off. Each boy has his string, and any other boy would as soon think of rifling that youth’s warbags as riding one of his ponies without permission. The pony from whose neck still hung the detaining lariat of the Tomcat had been detailed by the Turkey Track to the use and behoof of Mr. Cook.
“Jack said I could take him,” returned the Tomcat as he leaped into the saddle.