“You Milly, damn yore black Baptist hide, quit yore shouting and build a fire! Make some coffee for Miss Taisie. I’ll tell Sinker to hold the remuda back, Miss Taisie. You-all come on up then.”
Presently Cinquo Centavos rode up, shy and grinning, abashed yet happy at being appointed personal guardian of his deity. Thin, burned brown, ragged, his hat almost no hat at all, boots and saddle alone marked him worthy to join these other men—these and his instinctive mastery of horseflesh. At sight of Milly clambering down over the cart wheel—indeed a dismaying spectacle—his mount began to plunge and pitch. The boy sat him, annoyed. Taisie waved a hand.
“Fine, Cinquo!” she called. “I like to see you ride.”
The boy smiled as he jerked up the head of the horse.
“I didn’t make him pitch, ma’am,” said he. “He’s jest done that hisself. I reckon it was the sight o’ Milly’s laigs. He’s all right now.” He dismounted.
“How are you coming on, Cinquo?” inquired his mistress. “Getting to be a regular trail man?”
“I ain’t lost a head yit, ma’am,” said the youth simply. “One D Slash hawse turned back this mornin’, but I crossed him. I got my hull bunch. Now we’re over two-three rivers; they won’t turn back now. Hawses is a heap reasonabler than cows.”
“Jim says you work too hard. You don’t need to be up all night on a remuda, he says—horses stick together. You don’t have to watch them every minute.”
“Shore they do, ma’am. You don’t bed ’em and tuck ’em in like you do cows. I wouldn’t be no cowman,” superiorly. “Gimme two-three weeks on the trail,” he added eagerly, “I wouldn’t hatter watch so hard, like now. They feed against the wind, ma’am. I got the bell on that big white Del Sol mare. I allus listen which way the bell is soundin’, and so I allus know where they’re at: Why, sleep? I slep’ most a hour last night. When I don’t hear the bell I wake up. It’s easy if you savvy hawses. I ain’t gwine to lose nary head, to Aberlene, ma’am.” He colored deeply. “I—well, I ain’t, now!”
“I’ve got all good men, Cinquo,” said his deity. “They savvy cows and savvy horses.”