In the foothills, many miles away from Slow Down Ranch and Tralee, there
lived a herd of wild ponies, and it had been the ambition of a dozen
ranchmen and broncho-busters thereabouts to capture one or many. More
than once Orlando had seen a little gray broncho, with legs like the
wrists of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks
and the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone upon some
promontory, and he had made up his mind that if, and when, there came a
day of broncho-busting, he would become a hunter of the little gray mare.
When the news came that the ranchmen for miles around were preparing for
the drive of the hills, he determined to take part in it, against the
commands of the Young Doctor, who said that he would run risk in doing
so, for, though his wound was healed, he should still avoid strain and
fatigue.

There is no fatigue like that of broncho-busting. It is not galloping on
the turf; it is being shaken and tossed in a saddle which the knees can
never grip, on the back of something gone mad--for the maddest, wisest,
carefullest thing on earth is a broncho, which itself was once a wild
pony of the hills, and has been hunted down, thrown by the lasso,
saddled, bridled and heart-broken all in an hour. When the broncho which
was once a wild pony sets out on the chase after its own, there is
nothing like it in the world; and so Orlando found.

The veteran broncho-busters and ranchmen gave him no vociferous welcome
as he appeared among them. Had it not been for the reputation which he
already gained for courage, such as he had shown in the recent affair
when he had driven off the men who were robbing Joel Mazarine, and also
for an idea, steadily spreading, that he was masquerading, and that
behind all, was a curly-headed, intrepid, out-door "white man," he would