"You! How did you dare?"

"I wanted to see if I could, and there was nobody in the corral, and I
climbed on his back, and he was just lovely!"

And just then, with Kid astride him, Dynamite pranced and curveted down
the road. With a beaming face Kid waved his hat at us and galloped
off. Dynamite making not even the sign of a desire to buck. After
that the boy could not be persuaded to ride any other horse. And as
long as Kid bestrode him, or Madge, with Kid's connivance and help,
surreptitiously mounted him, Dynamite's behavior was perfect. But he
worked woe upon any grown person that made the attempt.

The black horse's life was not an easy one under Kid's mastership. The
boy never rode at a less pace than a gallop, and even in that dry, hot
air Dynamite was always reeking with sweat when they came home.

Just how the Kid put in his time out on the plains was a mystery. The
cowboys with whom and for whose assistance he was sent out
good-naturedly swore that he was "not worth a whoop in h--l." If they
needed him, he was nowhere in sight, and if they particularly did not
want him he was sure to come charging over the plain, straight upon the
cattle they had bunched, and scatter the frightened creatures to the
four winds. But mostly they said he managed to get lost; which was
only their kindly way of putting the fact that he slipped away from
them and pursued his own amusements at a sufficient distance not to be
disturbed by their need of him.

What he did with himself all day long Mrs. Williams and I discovered