"We want one apiece," crisply demanded Hopalong, "with speed, bottom, an’ sand. Got ’em? No? Then where can we get ’em to-night?" "What’d he do?" blundered the host, rubbing the bill with tender fingers and looking for information instead of giving it. "He dropped out th’ winder," sharply replied Tex. "We never stand for that." "Never, not under no circumstances," endorsed his friend. "It allus riles us. How ’bout them horses?" "I reckon I can fix you up," offered Dick. "I sold him th’ hoss he ’s got. He wanted th’ best in town, which he didn’t get for bein’ too blamed flip. But he paid for it, just th’ same. I got a roan an’ a bay that ’ll run Big Gray off ’n his feed an’ his feet. If yo ’re comin’ back this way I ’ll buy ’em back again at a reduction—I ’d like to keep them two. I don’t reckon I ’ll get no chance to buy back th’ other." The horseman fell in behind the descending procession and lined up with it against the bar on Hopalong’s treat. Then they left the proprietor to swear at the cook while they departed for the corral. Dick chuckled. "Th’ gray I sold yore missin’ friend carried Bad Hawkins from Juniper Creek to Halfway in fourteen hours—ten miles an hour. Th’ roan an’ th’ bay did it in ten hours even—which puts a period after th’ last words of Hawkins. Bad Hawkins weighed less ’n you," he said to Tex, "an’ th’ gray shore sprains a laig a-doin’ it. It don’t show—that is, not when he was sold it did n’t. That feller was too d—d flip—one of them Smart Alecks that stirs my bile somethin’ awful." Tex wearied of his voice: "Yore discernment is very creditable," he replied, with becoming gravity. The horseman glanced at him out of the corner of his eye: "Yes—I reckon so," he hazarded. When they reached the corral the two strangers looked in critically. Nearly a score of horses were impounded, among them several bays and roans. Hopalong pointed to one of the roans. "That looks like th’ horse," he remarked, quietly, at the instant his friend singled out the bay. "Them ’s th’ hosses—they ’ll run th’ liver out of Big Gray even if his laig does hold out," smiled their owner, glad that his first customer had not been as wise as either of these two men. The horses were cut out and accepted on the spot. "How much?" demanded Hopalong, brusquely. "Eighty apiece." "That’s a lot of money. But we got to have ’em. How ’bout saddles? We can do without ’em if we has to, but we ain’t hankerin’ very strong to do it." "I got a couple of good ones," responded the horseman. Then he yielded to a sudden burst of generosity. "Tell you what I ’ll do—I ’ll sell you them saddles for forty apiece an’ when I gets ’em back, you gets yore money back. An’ if you don’t kill th’ hosses, we ’ll have a little dicker over them, too. I would n’t sell ’em only for a good price an’ you won’t have nothin’ to complain about if I buys ’em back again."