"Come on."
CHAPTER XX
THE WALKING MAN
Sundown's sense of the dramatic, his love for posing, with his
linguistic ability to adopt the vernacular of the moment so impressed
the temperamental Murphy that he disregarded a portion of his friend
Corliss's note, and the morning following his lean guest's arrival at
the ranch the jovial Irishman himself saddled and bridled the swiftest
and most vicious horse in the corral; a glass-eyed pinto, bronc from
the end of his switching tail to his pink-mottled muzzle. He was a
horse with a record which he did not allow to become obsolete, although
he had plenty of competition to contend with in the string of broncs
that Murphy's riders variously bestrode. Moreover, the pinto, like
dynamite, "went off" at the most unexpected intervals, as did many of
his riders. Sundown, bidding farewell to his host, mounted and swung
out of the yard at a lope. The pinto had ideas of his own. Should he
buck in the yard, he would immediately be roped and turned into the
corral again. Out on the mesas it would be different--and it was.
He paid no attention to a tumble-weed gyrating across the Apache road.
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