“Pretty middlin’ bunch,” mused the old man. He had never been known to say more about his horses. “Pretty middlin’.”
“Sure,” said Dode, and watched the pinto ambling up the trail. Then he dismounted and opened the stable door.
“I’m leaving two men,” said the policeman. “You can corral them to-night, and the vet’ll be along to-morrow.”
Dode leant against the stable and watched him mount.
“How many d’you think——” he began.
“The vet’ll be along to-morrow,” the other repeated shortly, and set spurs to his horse.
The next day and the next the grass-flat corrals creaked and strained and rattled while an endless procession of horses fought and worked its way along the narrow chutes, halted a brief moment while one of its number was subjected to the “squeeze” and a minute examination by a sweating police vet. and passed on, some to another corral and some—pitiably few—to the open prairie and freedom.
Dode Sinclair watched the work like a man in a trance.
“It was eight o’clock before Joe Gilchrist returned” (page 161).