"Yes. All he needs is a couple of punchers and a hoss-doctor and a policeman to ride round with him and keep him out of trouble. He's no account; never will be," growled Williams.
"I don't know, Brand. He's a mighty likely-looking and interesting specimen. He's different. I kind of like him."
"Well, I don't. I ain't got time. He's always goin' to manufacture trouble, when he don't come by it natural. He's got a kind eye, but no brains behind it."
They mounted and rode up the hill, looking for breaks in the fences and counting the colts, some of whom, luxuriously lazy in the heat of the sun, stood with lowered heads, drowsing. Others, scattered about the hillsides and in the arroyos, grazed nippingly at the sparse bunch-grass, moving quickly from clump to clump.
The "blunder" colt seemed to find his own imbecilities sufficiently entertaining, for he grazed alone.
The foreman's inspection terminated with the repairing of a break in the fence inclosing the spring-hole, a small area of bog-land dotted with hummocks of lush grass. Between the hummocks was a slimy, black ooze that covered the bones of more than one unfortunate animal. The heavy, ripe grass lent an appearance of stability, of solidity, to the treacherous footing.
Williams and Collie reinforced the sagging posts with props of fallen limbs and stones carried from the trail below. They piled brush where the wire had parted, filling the opening with an almost impassable barrier of twisted branches. Until the last rain, the spring-hole fence had appeared solid—but one night of rain in the California hills can work unimaginable changes in trail, stream-bed, or fence line.
"Get after that fence first thing in the morning," said Williams as he unsaddled the pinto that afternoon. "I noticed the blunder colt followed us up to the spring. If there's any way of gettin' bogged, he'll find it, or invent a new way for himself."
The blunder colt's mischief-making amounted to absolute genius. There was much of the enterprising puppy in his nature and in his methods. The impulse which seemed to direct the extremely uneven tenor of his way would have resolved itself orally into: "Do it—and then see what happens!" He was not vicious, but brainlessly joyful in his mischief.
As the foreman and Collie disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, the colt, who had watched them with absurdly stupid intensity, lowered his head and nibbled indifferently at the grass along the edge of the spring-hole fence. He approached the break and sniffed at the props and network of branches. This was interesting! And a very carelessly constructed piece of fence, indeed! He would investigate. The blunder colt was never too hungry to cease grazing and turn toward adventure.