“All right!” said the man, as he dismounted. “Catch up!”
Ned lost no time in putting the saddle and bridle on his own nag, and while he was doing it, the stranger stood, holding his horse by the bridle and looking back over the way he had come. When Ned brought up his horse, the man said:
“You’re sure this nag belongs to you, are you? I run no risk of being stopped by anybody, who will lay claim to him, do I?”
“No, sir,” replied Ned, “he’s mine; and if you will go to our rancho with me, I will show you a bill of sale of him.”
“I asked the question because there are such things in the world as horse-thieves, you know!” said the stranger, as he placed his own bridle in the boy’s hand and seized Ned’s horse by the bit.
“There are no such things in this country, I can tell you,” replied Ned, with a knowing shake of his head. “The settlers would turn out to hunt down a horse-thief as readily as they would to hunt down a grizzly bear. It wouldn’t even be safe for a man to be found here with a stolen horse in his possession, no matter whether he was the thief or not!”
Why was it that Ned did not ask the man the same question which the latter had just propounded to him? Perhaps it was because he did not wish to detain him. The stranger seemed very impatient to mount and resume his journey, and Ned was impatient to have him do so, for when the two horses were brought closer together, anybody could see that there was a vast difference between them. No sane man would have proposed such an exchange, and just then it occurred to the amateur horse-trader that there might be something wrong with the animal. Perhaps he wasn’t quite safe for so inexperienced a person as himself.
“Is he perfectly gentle?” asked Ned. “He won’t kick or bite or throw a fellow off, will he?”
“O no! he’s as quiet as an old cow. A child can manage him.”
“What’s his name?”