“About a week now,” Scott replied. “Oh, sure,” Baxter exclaimed, “I knew that. Of course we all heard how you bought and rode Jed Clark’s horse. He certainly is a beauty. Have you had any trouble with him?”
“No,” Scott said, “no real trouble. He ran away with me the other day when a mountain lion got on our trail, but he only took me home a little faster than I intended to go. There does not seem to be a mean trait about him.”
“He killed the first man who tried to ride him,” Baxter explained. “That gave him the name of an outlaw and kept any one else from trying him. He probably never was mean and only killed the fellow by accident. You were certainly lucky to get him.”
And so they talked of little things of purely personal interest, really getting acquainted with each other while they ate their little packages of lunch.
“Now,” Baxter exclaimed with a comfortable sigh as he stretched flat on his back and gazed out across the valley, “let’s have your trouble.”
“Well,” Scott began thoughtfully, “I might as well begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story. Then you can judge for yourself. I have mighty little definite to go on and I am too green to understand that.”
“Must be something pretty rotten if a greenhorn got on to it in a week,” Baxter commented.
“Of course,” Scott continued, “the super explained the trouble they had in that patrol district and said he hoped to break it up by getting in a complete stranger from another part of the country. As I did not know anything about sheep they gave me a guard who is an expert, but as I understand it they hold me responsible for keeping the bands down to the number allowed in the permits.”
“Who is that guard?” Baxter interrupted.
“His name is Heth.”