"What's the idea?" asked Bud, and his question seemed to give Pocut Pete a chance to pull himself together, to answer with more coolness than he had exhibited by his first exclamation.
"This steer had some sort of a growth on his shoulder—like a wart," explained the cowboy. "I was just seeing if I could cut it off."
"You'd better be careful!" warned Old Billee.
"Why?" asked Pocut Pete so quickly that the other's remark might have well carried a threat, which, in the tone Billee used it, did not.
"You may get horned," went on the veteran cow puncher. For many of the cattle on the range of Bud and his cousins "wore their horns long," so to speak. Gradually the dehorning system was spreading through the west, but such an innovation, found to be most practical from all standpoints, took time to grow.
"Oh, this chap isn't dangerous," went on Pocut Pete with a laugh, closing his rather large pocket knife with a snap. "All the same, if you don't want me to snip off that wart I won't."
"I wouldn't," said Bud. "Not but what I'm glad to have you take an interest in the cattle," he went on, "but cutting one with a knife might bring on blood poisoning."
"Yes, an' jabbin' a knife into one might set it wild, an' it would rush off an' start a stampede," said Billee.
"I realized that," admitted Pocut Pete, "so that's why I didn't do it until I got this steer off by himself."
He spoke this truly enough, for the lone animal he had been "operating" on was some distance from the main herd.