Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off
without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How
much?"
Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
"That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked.
Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New
Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head
neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him
with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that
come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there
being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his
fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at
these conchs."
He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The
sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the
nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two
bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he
held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot.
Not bad, I want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this one?"
The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge.
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