"Yes; but I should want to see him by daylight, get on his back, and try him."
"Look here," the man said. "Me and my mate are pressed for time. Perhaps we have got an appointment with the president, perhaps we haven't; anyhow, we want to go on. We have got two spare horses, and we don't wish to bother with them no further."
"Well, I will look at the horse now," Hugh said, and, accompanied by Bill Royce, he followed the man to the stables. Two horses were standing, ready saddled and bridled, hitched to hooks outside the shed. Inside were two others. One was an ordinary-looking horse, bony and angular. A pack-saddle hung on a beam close by. He had evidently been used for carrying baggage. The other was a handsome roan, which snorted angrily as they approached with lanterns.
"That is something like a horse," the man said. "Five years old, strong, and up to anything, clean-limbed, full of courage, and fast."
"He has got a temper," Hugh said as the horse laid back his ears and made a sudden and vicious snap at the man's hand.
"He is a bit playful," the man said.
"Well, I don't like buying him without trying him," Hugh said. "He may be up to all sorts of tricks, and may kick his saddle over his head. What do you want for him?"
"I tell you what," the man said. "That horse would be dirt cheap at two hundred and fifty dollars, but as I have told you we want to be moving on, and I will sell him for a hundred and fifty. I would rather put a bullet through his head than let him go for less than that."
"Well, let us go back into the saloon and talk it over," Hugh said. "It is a rum way to buy a horse, but I like his looks."
The other man was still standing at the bar when they entered. Hugh, knowing that it would be an unheard-of thing to buy a horse without the ceremony of taking drinks being performed, went to the bar and ordered them for the four. "If I buy that horse," he said, "it will be on one condition. You see I don't know where he has come from. The man you got him from may have stolen him, and I might happen to come across the former owner, and I haven't any fancy for being strung up as a horse-thief."