CHAPTER VIIThat was in the days before every hired man had a Ford. Automobiles was something to dream about, but not to see. When I got to the brick hotel back in the white-man’s part of Sour City, with Pepillo and my luggage in the wagon, there was Randal setting up on the seat of a buckboard reining in a pair of fine hosses and gentling them down a little with his voice, because they was the kind that needed gentling. You could tell by one look at them hosses why it was that Randal wasn’t apt to make any howling success as an economical rancher, because that span was a pair of high-steppers that would of been more useful on a race track than in toting hired men and their blanket rolls back and forth to the ranch-house, and bringing in empty boxes and bringing out groceries and meat. I

