In and out among the grazing ponies wound the Tomcat. At last he discovered what he sought. He pitched the loop of his rope over the head of a little bay, with four black legs and an eye like the full-blown moon.
This pony had name for speed and bottom. He had come from the ranges of the Triangle-dot, whose ponies, as all the cow-world knows, have in them a streak of the thoroughbred. The one roped by the Tomcat, carrying a thirty-pound saddle and a hundred-and-fifty-pound man, could put one hundred even miles behind him between dark and dark. He had never tasted anything better than mother's milk and grass and would have drawn back and hollyhocked his nostrils at an ear of yellow corn as though that vegetable were a rattlesnake.
As the Tomcat was shifting his saddle from the weary one to the pony freshly caught the horse-hustler came riding out from the shadow of a cottonwood.
"I wouldn't be in your saddle," observed the horse-hustler to the Tomcat, busy over his girths, "for the price of fifty steers if Jack Cook crosses up with you on his little Shylock hoss." The name of the bay pony was the name of Shakespeare's Jew.
Upon a round-up a cowpony has two proprietors. His title, doubtless, is vested in the ranch whose brand he wears. Body and soul, however, he belongs to that cowboy to whom he is told off. Each boy has his string, and any other boy would as soon think of rifling that youth's warbags as riding one of his ponies without permission. The pony from whose neck still hung the detaining lariat of the Tomcat had been detailed by the Turkey Track to the use and behoof of Mr. Cook.
"Jack said I could take him," returned the Tomcat as he leaped into the saddle.
This was a lie, but the horse-hustler never mistrusted. It was not that he had faith in the veracity of the Tomcat, but he relied upon his want of courage. Mr. Cook, while an excellent soul in the main, was prey to restless petulances. The horse-hustler did not believe that the Tomcat would intromit with the possessions of Mr. Cook lacking that gentleman's consent. When Shylock was ready the Tomcat turned his nervous muzzle towards the north and was off at a cheerful road-gait.
While scrambling up an arroya and pointing for the table-lands beyond, the Tomcat ran into Mr. Cook, picking his way towards the outfit's evening camp. Mr. Cook was surprised at the picture of the Tomcat astride his sacred Shylock. The Tomcat appeared dashed, not to say dismayed, by the meeting.