"No; he was a small Texas horse. I suppose he'd weigh eight hundred and fifty or nine hundred pounds. He didn't seem to have any special breeding; but his head showed a lot of intelligence." "Nobody could tell, I suppose," Powell remarked, "whether this was a horse of very great natural intelligence, or whether he'd been ridden by a man of superior intelligence." "No," said Joe; "I reckon that would be all guesswork. It might have been both. At all events he was a natural wonder." "What finally became of him?" asked Jack. "I don't know. When I left there the Boslers were still running cattle, and George Bosler owned Old Blue. The horse got to be so well known after a while that plenty of men wanted to buy him; but of course Bosler wouldn't sell him. At that time you could buy a first-class cow horse in that country for fifty dollars, but I heard that a man named Sheedy came to Bosler and offered him a check for a thousand dollars for Old Blue. But Bosler just told him that he had no price to put on the horse; he wasn't for sale." "Were there any more horses like that down in that country?" asked Jack. "No," said Joe, "I don't believe there was one. Good horses were plenty, but nothing that you could talk of in the same day with Old Blue. As I tell you, he was in a class by himself, and anybody that ever saw him work or knew about him would tell you the same thing. A man named Carter owned a horse--a white horse--that was said to be the second-best horse in that round-up; but he wasn't in the same class with Bosler's horse. He was a good horse and did his work well, but he couldn't be talked of with Blue. Then, up on Cody and North's ranch on the Dismal, they had an awful good horse--a short-coupled, strong dun horse that Cody sent out once after he had lost one of the ranch horses. The horse was branded JO on the left shoulder and they used to call him Old Joe. Likely you remember him, Hugh?" "Sure," said Hugh. "He was a good horse and there wasn't much to choose between him and Carter's white horse. They were way ahead of the ordinary cow horses." "There's one thing you don't want to forget," put in McIntyre, "and that's what Joe said a while ago. Down in that country at that time, if I understand it, there were lots more cattle than we've ever had up here, and because all these cattle were from Texas and were wild, active and quick, they had to have quick horses down there. I've heard men that have worked down there--men that came from up in this country I mean--say that in those days their horses weren't as good for cutting as the Texas horse. They were more awkward and lots slower."