It was not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with the high heels of his cowboy boots--from which a faint odor of the stable emanated--hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's hand plying the needle on that almost sacred sofa-pillow. "Your work must be very interesting, Mr. Britt," suggested Dora. "I dunno as 'tis," replied Mr. Britt. "It's so--so picturesque." Mr. Britt considered. "I shouldn't say it was." "But you like it?" "Not by a high-kick!" If there was one thing upon which Mr. Britt prided himself more than another, it was upon knowing how to temper his language to his company. "Why do you stick to it, then?" "Don't know how to do anything else." "You don't get much time to read, do you?" "Oh, yes; _P'lice Gazette_ comes reg'lar." "But you have no church or social privileges?" "What's that?" "I say, you have no entertainment, no time or opportunity for amusement, have you?" "Oh, my, yes," Mr. Britt declared heartily. "We has a game of stud poker nearly every Sunday mornin', and races in the afternoon." "Ain't he sparklin'?" whispered Susie across the room to Dora, who pretended not to hear. "You are fond of horses?" inquired the Schoolmarm, desperately. "Oh, I has nothin' agin 'em." He qualified his statement by adding: "Leastways, unless they come from the Buffalo Basin country. Then I shore hates 'em." At last Mr. Britt was upon a subject upon which he could talk fluently and for an indefinite length of time. "You take that there Buffalo Basin stock," he went on earnestly, "and they're nothin' but inbred cayuse outlaws. They're treach'rous. Oneriest horses that ever wore hair. Can't gentle 'em--simply can't be done. They've piled me up more times than any horses that run. Sunfishers--the hull of 'em; rare up and fall over backwards. 'Tain't pleasant ridin' a horse like that. Wheel on you quicker'n a weasel; shy clean acrost the road at nothin'; kick--stand up and strike at you in the corral. It's irritatin'. Hard keepers, too. Maybe you've noticed that blue roan I'm ridin'. Well, sir, the way I've throwed feed into that horse is a scandal, and the more he eats the worse he looks. Besides, it spoils them Buffalo Basin buzzard-heads to eat. Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles, and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his back, and zebra stripes on his legs--high back, square chest--say, then you got a _horse!_"