My answer was not given from an overwhelming desire to be
truthful. Frank frowned a little, as it wondering how a man could
have the nerve to start out on a jaunt with Buffalo Jones without
being a good horseman. To be unable to stick on the back of a
wild mustang, or a cayuse, was an unpardonable sin in Arizona. My
frank admission was made relatively, with my mind on what cowboys
held as a standard of horsemanship.

The mount Frank trotted out of the corral for me was a pure
white, beautiful mustang, nervous, sensitive, quivering. I
watched Frank put on the saddle, and when he called me I did not
fail to catch a covert twinkle in his merry brown eyes. Looking
away toward Buckskin Mountain, which was coincidentally in the
direction of home, I said to myself: "This may be where you get
on, but most certainly it is where you get off!"

Jones was already riding far beyond the corral, as I could see by
a cloud of dust; and I set off after him, with the painful
consciousness that I must have looked to Frank and Jim much as
Central Park equestrians had often looked to me. Frank shouted
after me that he would catch up with us out on the range. I was
not in any great hurry to overtake Jones, but evidently my
horse's inclinations differed from mine; at any rate, he made the
dust fly, and jumped the little sage bushes.

Jones, who had tarried to inspect one of the pools--formed of
running water from the corrals--greeted me as I came up with this
cheerful observation.

"What in thunder did Frank give you that white nag for? The