“That’s just what I intend to do,” said Guy. “I am going to hunt about here till I get a horse and find a companion, and then I’m going to strike for the plains.”
“Then my man Zeke is jest the feller you want to see,” said the ranchman. “He’s a reg’lar hunter, an’ you’d know it the minute you sot eyes onto him, fur you have to get a tree in line with him when he’s movin’ to see if he’s goin’ ahead any. He’s the laziest man I ever see, an’ I’ve seed a heap. He b’longs out on the prairy, kills buffaler fur a livin’. Last season he shot two thousand an’ better. Got a dollar apiece fur the hides, an’ come down to ’Frisco to see the elephant. He seed him, too, I reckon, fur when I found him he was flat busted, an’ as hungry as a wolf. He’s herdin’ cattle fur me now to get a hoss an’ a new outfit, an’ when he gets ’em he’s goin’ back to the plains.”
“Did you say he was working for a horse?” asked Guy.
“Wal, he’s arned the hoss already, an’ now he’s workin’ fur a kit—a rifle, blankets an’ so on. He takes ’em outen my store, you know.”
“Have you any other horse you’d like to sell?”
“Wal, I dunno,” said the ranchman with a smile.
“I’ve got a matter of six or seven hundred, mebbe, an’ might spar’ one more.”
“What do you ask for them?”
“All prices—twenty-five to seventy-five dollars.”
“I should like to get one,” said Guy, “and I am willing to work for it.”