He explained this by saying after a time: "I been my whole life in these
parts without running across a hoss that could pack me the way a man
ought to be packed on a hoss. I weigh two hundred and thirty, son, and it
busts the back of a horse in the mountains. Now, you ain't a flyweight
yourself, and El Sangre takes you along like you was a feather."

Steeldust was already grunting at every sharp rise, and El Sangre had not
even broken out in perspiration.

A mile or so out of the town they left the road and struck onto a mere
semblance of a trail, broad enough, but practically as rough as nature
chose to make it. This wound at sharp and ever-changing angles into the
hills, and presently they were pressing through a dense growth of
lodgepole pine.

It seemed strange to Terry that a prosperous rancher with an outfit of
any size should have a road no more beaten than this one leading to his
place. But he was thinking too busily of other things to pay much heed to
such surmises and small events. He was brooding over the events of the
afternoon. If his exploits in the gaming hall should ever come to the ear
of Aunt Elizabeth, he was certain enough that he would be finally damned
in her judgment. Too often he had heard her express an opinion of those
who lived by "chance and their wits," as she phrased it. And the thought
of it irked him.

He roused himself out of his musing. They had come out from the trees and
were in sight of a solidly built house on the hill. There was one thing
which struck his mind at once. No attempt had been made to find level for
the foundation. The log structure had been built apparently at random on