"It wouldn't trouble my conscience none if I hazed a bunch of his horses over the line, but horses are so cheap now that it wouldn't pay to take the chance."
"There's the Prouty Bank," Wallie suggested, ironically.
"Them bullet-proof screens have made cashiers too hard to git at." Pinkey spoke in an authoritative tone.
"Why don't you marry some rich widow and get us a stake?"
"Aw-w!" Resentment and disgust were in Pinkey's voice. "I'd steal washings off of clothes lines first." He added: "I don't like them jokes."
"I didn't know you were touchy, Pink."
"Everybody's touchy," Pinkey replied, sagely, "if you hit 'em on the right spot. But, do you know, this dude ranch sticks in my mind, and I can't git it out."
"We might as well let it drop. We haven't the money, so we're wasting our breath. We'll lose the jobs we've got if we don't get about our business. Let's leave the cattle in the corral and scout a little through the hills--it'll save us another trip. I don't want to come here again soon--it hurts too much."
Pinkey agreed, and they rode gloomily along the creek bank looking for a ford. A few hot days had taken off the heavy snows in the mountains so quickly that the stream was running swift and deep.
"That's treach'rous water," Pinkey observed. "They's boulders in there as big as a house where it looks all smooth on top. I know a place about a mile or so where I think it'll be safe."
They had ridden nearly that distance when, simultaneously, they pulled their horses up.
"Look at that crazy fool!" Pinkey ejaculated, aghast.
"It's--Canby!" Wallie exclaimed.
"Nobody else! Watch him," incredulously, "tryin' to quirt his horse across the crick!"
"Isn't it the ford?"
"I should say not! It looks like the place but it ain't--he's mixed--he'll be in a jack-pot quick if he don't back out. Onct his horse stumbles it'll never git its feet in there."
They rode close enough to hear Canby cursing as he whipped.
"Look at him punish the poor brute! See him use that quirt and cut him with his spurs! Say, that makes me sick to see a good horse abused!" Pinkey cried, indignantly.
Wallie said nothing but watched with hard, narrowed eyes.
"I s'pose I'd oughta yell and warn him," finally Pinkey said, reluctantly.
"You let out a yip and I'll slat you across the face!"
Pinkey stared at the words--at Wallie's voice--at an expression he never had seen before.
"I know how you feel, but it's pure murder to let him git into that crick."