fall and slowed themselves constantly by striking their hoofs from side
to side against the face of the cliff. And so they landed, with bunched
feet, on the first broad terrace below and again bounced over the ledge
and so out of sight.

He dined on wild mutton that evening. In the morning he hunted along the
edge of the cliffs until he came to a difficult route down to the valley.
An ordinary horse would never have made it, but El Sangre was in his
glory. If he had not the agility of the mountain sheep, he was well-nigh
as level-headed in the face of tremendous heights. He knew how to pitch
ten feet down to a terrace and strike on his bunched hoofs so that the
force of the fall would not break his legs or unseat his rider. Again he
understood how to drive in the toes of his hoofs and go up safely through
loose gravel where most horses, even mustangs, would have skidded to the
bottom of the slope. And he was wise in trails. Twice he rejected the
courses which Terry picked, and the rider very wisely let him have his
way. The result was that they took a more winding, but a far safer
course, and arrived before midmorning in the bottomlands.

The first ranch house he applied to accepted him. And there he took up
his work.

It was the ordinary outfit--the sun- and wind-racked shack for a house,
the stumbling outlying barns and sheds, and the maze of corral fences.
They asked Terry no questions, accepted his first name without an
addition, and let him go his way.

He was happy enough. He had not the leisure for thought or for
remembering better times. If he had leisure here and there, he used it
industriously in teaching El Sangre the "cow" business. The stallion