ledge, too. Like some people, though. Most all its good points is
right on the surface. Nothing to back it up."

"She's sure running light, all right Now," Bud added
sardonically, but with the whimsical quirk withal, "if it was
like a carburetor, and you could give it a richer mixture--"

"Yeah. What do you make of it, Bud?"

"Well--aw, there comes that durn colt, bringing up the drag.
Say Cash, that colt's just about all in. Cora's nothing but a bag
of bones, too. They'll never winter--not on this range, they
won't."

Cash got up and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's
shoulder at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond
them the desert baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above
them the sky glared a brassy blue with never a could. Over a low
ridge came Monte and Pete, walking with heads drooping. Their hip
bones lifted above their ridged paunches, their backbones, peaked
sharp above, their withers were lean and pinched looking. In
August the desert herbage has lost what little succulence it ever
possessed, and the gleanings are scarce worth the walking after.

"They're pretty thin," Cash observed speculatively, as though
be was measuring them mentally for some particular need.

"We'd have to grain 'em heavy till we struck better feed. And
pack light." Bud answered his thought.