A grin spread over his face and he looked up at Nell, "Say, Mrs. Traynor, Maw hated horn-toads. Bill an' me rounded-up twenty of 'em once, and hid 'em in a closet in a box. The box got upsot someways in the night, and when Maw got up to start breakfast you never heerd such a whoop! She put her foot on one of 'em. It didn't hurt the toad for she took her foot off too quick, but Bill an me never brung any more into the house after that mornin'. You see, when she put down her other foot, she hit another toad, an' that room was jest naturally alive with 'em. We rounded-up the whole herd, twenty of 'em, but Maw said she knewed thar was a thousand and the rest of 'em got away."
"I'm rather inclined to sympathize with your mother, Bronco," was Nell's laughing comment. She shuddered, "Those little sharp horns are bad enough to step on with a bare foot, but to feel the horns moving would be rather upsetting, I should think."
"It was," Bronco rejoined soberly. "But Maw wasn't so upsot as we kids was—afterwards."
Jamie devoted himself to his new pet, and Nell's eyes wandered to her husband and Doctor Powell who were talking with another man, not far away. She saw this man had a grizzly beard that seemed never to have been cropped or shaven. The dry skin of neck and throat was wrinkled and the texture and colour of a piece of Arizona jerky from long exposure to the sun and wind. On his head, an old straw hat was guiltless of a crown, but flaunted two dilapidated turkey quills. Tufts of unkempt hair peered inquisitively over the broken edges above the ragged brim. A grim mouth made a repository for a corn-cob pipe, and suspicious grey eyes squinted from Powell's face to that of the Boss of the Diamond H.
Bronco saw her interest, and explained, "That's Paddy Lafferty, owns the PL ranch and herd, that the doctor figgers on buyin'," then Nell recalled the many stories she had already heard of this eccentric character. Paddy's eyes caught hers, and she flushed guiltily as she glanced away quickly.
"It's a dandy rodeo," she heard Bronco's voice beside her, as he sat on the ground, knees drawn up, his muscular hands busy rolling a cigarette.
"I suppose I'll get used to wild cattle after a while," Nell hazarded, "but, honestly, Bronco, I'm afraid of them. Their horns are so big and sharp."
"Why!" the cowpuncher's amazement was undisguised. "These is short-horns! We ain't got no long-horns on the range. You'd oughter seen some of the ol' Texas long-horns we uster have. Lots of times the horns was so wide we couldn't get a steer loaded into a box-car till we'd sawed off the horns. And wild—" he paused for adequate words before he finished, "Say, they was a cross between a deer an' a mountain-lion, so fur as disposition counts!"
"Well, I never feel safe except on my pony."
"Say, Mrs. Traynor, you're dead safe anywheres in Arizona," the cowboy assured her earnestly. "Why, if you was to walk over to that air herd, you'd stampede it quick as a wink!"