It seemed to Wallie an excellent opportunity to learn something which might be of future use to him, so he joined it.
A man who looked capable of selling a runaway horse to his grandmother was saying emphatically: "Eight, next spring, I tell you. We raised her a pet on the ranch, so I ought to know what I'm talkin' about."
The person who had managed to separate the horse's jaws laughed uproariously: "If she ever sees sixteen again----"
"She ain't over eight, and I'll take my oath on it," interrupted the owner, with a fine show of indignation.
"If I could believe you, I'd buy her."
A piping voice from the group interjected itself into the conversation. It came from under the limp brim of a hat that dropped to the speaker's shoulders.
"Why, I knowed that harse when I first come to the country. She was runnin' with her mother over in the Bighorns, and Bear George at Tensleep owned her. Some said that Frank McMannigle's runnin' harse, 'Left Hand,' was her father, and others said she was jest a ketch colt, but I dunno. Her mother was a sorrel with a star in her forehead and the Two-pole-punkin' brand on her left shoulder. If I ain't mistaken, she had one white hind stockin' and they was a wire cut above her hock that was kind of a blemish. She got a ring bone and they had to kill her, but Bear George sold the colt, this mare here, to a feller at Kaysee over on Powder River and he won quite considerable money on her. It was about thirteen year ago that I last seen her, but I knowed her the minute I laid eyes on her. She et musty hay one winter and got the tizic, but you never would know it unless you run her. One of her stifle j'ints----"
The mare's owner interrupted at this juncture: "You jest turn your mouth on, don't you, Tex, and go off and leave it?"
"I happened to know a little somethin' about this harse," apologetically began "Tex," whose other name was McGonnigle, "so I thought----"
"So you thought you'd butt in and queer the sale of it. I suppose you'd suffer somethin' horrible if there was a horse-deal on and you had to keep your mouth shut?"
Mr. McGonnigle protested feebly that he had no such idea when he gave the horse's history, and Wallie was much interested in the wrangle, but he thought he caught a glimpse of Canby through one of the doorways of a stable so he hurried across the yard and found him in conversation with Boise Bill, who was grooming a work-horse which quite evidently was to be auctioned.