CHAPTER XXXIIGoing down a slope, I pushed up to Shorty, and I could holler ahead to big Rusty McArdle.
“What hosses did they take, Rusty?” I yelled to him.
He turned in the saddle, without slackening his pace.
“Dan Murphy’s grey and the bald-faced boy mare!”
Then two names knocked nine-tenths of my hopes out from under me, because the both of them animals was pretty well known to us on the ranch for speed. Besides, here was the three of us, all on more than average cow-ponies, to be sure, but all of us heavyweights of the rankest kind. And yonder there was Pepillo—somehow, I couldn’t think of her by any other name!—and young Pablo Almadares; the both of them lightweights, and of course Pepillo in particular.
No, it didn’t look like we had much chance, but still, no matter what I might
