"An' there's Price--Monty Price. Monty stands fer Montana, where
he hails from. Take a good look at him, Miss Majesty. He's been
hurt, I reckon. Thet accounts fer him bein' without hoss or
rope; an' thet limp. Wal, he's been ripped a little. It's sure
rare an seldom thet a cowboy gets foul of one of them thousands
of sharp horns; but it does happen."

Madeline saw a very short, wizened little man, ludicrously
bow-legged, with a face the color and hardness of a burned-out
cinder. He was hobbling by toward the wagon, and one of his
short, crooked legs dragged.

"Not much to look at, is he?" went on Stillwell. "Wal; I know
it's natural thet we're all best pleased by good looks in any
one, even a man. It hedn't ought to be thet way. Monty Price
looks like hell. But appearances are sure deceivin'. Monty saw
years of ridin' along the Missouri bottoms, the big prairies,
where there's high grass an' sometimes fires. In Montana they
have blizzards that freeze cattle standin' in their tracks. An'
hosses freeze to death. They tell me thet a drivin' sleet in the
face with the mercury forty below is somethin' to ride against.
You can't get Monty to say much about cold. All you hev to do is
to watch him, how he hunts the sun. It never gets too hot fer
Monty. Wal, I reckon he was a little more prepossessin' once.
The story thet come to us about Monty is this: He got caught out
in a prairie fire an' could hev saved himself easy, but there was
a lone ranch right in the line of fire, an' Monty knowed the
rancher was away, an' his wife an' baby was home. He knowed,
too, the way the wind was, thet the ranch-house would burn. It
was a long chance he was takin'. But he went over, put the woman