Fiddlefoot by Luke; Short Page A

compact as a cob of corn, with the flat shoulders and rounded breadbasket the Army coveted. Frank glanced once at him as he was walked by and said, “Turn him out, Red.”
    Jess Irby, from behind him, chuckled. “I’ll fight you on him, Frank.”
    Frank shook his head. “Sweenied shoulder, Jess.” He walked up to the horse and pointed to a faint flat depression in the smoothly bunched muscles of the right shoulder which indicated an atrophied muscle. “That’ll get by the Army vet, but not a line officer.”
    Jess rubbed his chin and said nothing. The men grinned at him, and Jess smiled faintly, too shrewd to argue.
    The crew was uncritical as he turned down the fifteenth horse for calf knees, which they could all see, and only Ray Shields protested stubbornly at the rejection of the twenty-fourth horse for being herring-gutted. “I’ll buy that damn horse, I like his chest,” Ray said, as he turned him out. The crew hooted good-naturedly.
    The fortieth and last horse was a sorrel, bearing, as did all the others, the hilted Saber brand which was Frank’s own, instead of the hiltless Saber which was the ranch brand. The sorrel was bright-eyed, alert, fat and sleek as a woodchuck from his mountain summer. The crew looked at him and there was a murmur of approval.
    Frank, this time, watched the horse pass him and made no comment. He made a circle with his finger, and Johnny Samuels, who was herding him, turned him and led him back. “No, sir,” Frank said then. “No quartermaster would pay for him.”
    A wave of protest came from the crew, and a sudden grin came to Frank’s face. He shook his head and said, “Get down and look at him.”
    A half-dozen punchers climbed off the corral and formed a loose circle around the sorrel. They regarded the horse in silence, and Johnny Samuels asked doubtfully, then, “Fifteen hands three?”
    â€œFifteen-two,” Frank said.
    They studied him some more in silence and Jess Irby remarked dryly, “He’s handin’ you taffy, Johnny. He’ll take him.”
    They all looked at Frank, and Frank shook his head. “Capped hip.” He touched the sorrel’s left hipbone, which bore a faint depression in its curve. Sometime long ago, a fall had clipped the point of the hipbone, which was enough to disqualify him for a cavalry mount.
    Johnny Samuels still looked doubtful; he walked behind the sorrel, bent his knees a little and sighted over his back. A baffled expression was in his face as he straightened and shook his head. “He’s hip down, all right.” He glanced over at Frank, and his grin now was friendly. “Don’t you ever sell me a horse, Frank.”
    The crew laughed at that, and Frank joined them. He knew now the truce was over, and that he was accepted. This, and the fight, was the price of readmission to Saber.
    Frank chose from the leftovers now the wheel team, and he and Johnny harnessed them and led them over to the buckboard and hooked them up. A saddle was thrown on the near horse of this team. The long rope, with its iron rings, was stretched out ahead of the buckboard’s tongue. Two by two, the chosen horses were led out by their new six-foot rope halters and haltered, a pair to each ring, a horse on either side of the big rope. When the tenth pair, with the near horse also saddled, was brought out, it was put in harness, and a chain joined the inside hame of each; and the big rope laid over it to keep it from dragging the ground. Ten more pair of horses were haltered ahead of this team, and then the lead team was harnessed to the ring in the end of the rope.
    Cass, when he finally stepped into the saddle of the near horse of the wheel team, could look over the backs of twenty-one teams stretched out a hundred and seventy feet ahead of him. The buckboard behind him, with its new snowy cover over the hoops, looked almost diminutive. Red Thornton