"Shucks! you think nobody ain't got no sagass but you," ejaculated Joe, as, launching her sauciest grimace at me, with a seat so sure and finished, that it was a treat to watch her, Squito shot off at a tangent on the broncho she was riding, with only a hackamore or headstall, to bring back a couple of ponies that were straying from the bunch.
"Well, now, you boys," said Murray one morning after breakfast, "we want to keep on picking up the calves that ain't branded. Joe, you'd best ride in back of Cunningham's. Jake, you make a bend out towards the Peak, and the Double Adobes. I'll go in towards the Baker Place and Skeleton Cañon, there's two big calves runs in there somewhere that we missed at the round up. We've got to get up that band of mares that's running with Charles Dickens, and count 'em, one day this week, too."
"That's so," chimed in Squito; "I ain't got a colt at all in the corrals to 'gentle' now."
Squito, who was perfectly fearless, and unerring with the lariat, used to amuse herself during the day with 'halter-breaking' and 'gentling' the young colts as soon as they were weaned. In doing this she required but little assistance, and displayed judgment and patience only less remarkable than her skill.
"Well, we'll get you up one," said the old man. "What are you going to do to-day, Mr. Francis?"
"I'll ride with you, Murray," I said.
Out in the horse corral there was a busy scene for the next few minutes, as each man lassoed his half-broken mount, and brought him to a standstill, snorting with fear, a quivering statue of flesh and streaming hair, and then led him to the saddling bench by the house. With a horse-hair lariat on her arm, the loop trailing from her shoulder, Squito looked on watchfully. But presently, taking compassion on my unskilful efforts, she whirled the rope twice round her head, enlarging the noose at the same time, and with the most perfect ease dropped it over the head of the "clay-bank" nag that I was endeavouring to catch. Almost simultaneously, she bent the other end of the lasso round one of the "snubbing" posts that stood about in the enclosure, and the "clay-bank" suddenly found himself captured. The Colonel, a martyr to rheumatism at the time, limped round meanwhile, chewing the end of a long cigar savagely, and swearing, not inaudibly, at the affliction which enforced his inaction.
Leaving the Gray Place, and turning our backs to the Peak, we headed for the Baker Place—some springs, about nine miles from the ranch, in the foot-hills of the San Simon range.