“Little Breech” rode a pony mule, a small animal of most perfect shape, with activity to correspond. The noon day camp was breaking up, the cattle were all yoked and hitched to the wagons. “Little Breech” had mounted his mule, preparing to round up his cavayard. At the moment the reins were lying loose on the mule’s neck, while “Little Breech” had both hands employed in adjusting his belt. Impulse dictated so, walking towards him unobserved, I picked up a stick, raised the mule’s tail and gently placed the stick under it. The mule instantly clasped it tight with his tail, commencing, before “Little Breech” could seize the bridle reins, the worst spell of bucking I had witnessed on the journey. He jumped and kicked and kicked and jumped for a hundred yards, describing a semi-circle in his gyrations. I was alarmed, fearing the boy’s neck would surely be broken. But failing to get hold of the bridle reins, he clamped the horn of the Spanish saddle, and, retaining his seat to the end, all the while swearing at me with as great force as he could command, his volubility being very much restricted by the prolonged bucking. X. A GRAY WOLF. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find the derivation of some of the Spanish or Mexican words and phrases then in use by the Santa Fé traders. For instance, the word “cavayard,” I have used and spelled as it was pronounced by these unlettered plainsmen and as applied by them to the bunch of loose cattle and horses driven behind the train. The pure Castilian has undoubtedly suffered many changes in New Mexico, among the lower classes particularly. The Spanish words used by these plainsmen had been both Mexicanized and then Missourianized until so changed and corrupted as to be hardly recognizable at all. This word “cavayard,” they declared, was of Spanish origin; if so it must have been a corruption of “caballar”--pronounced “cavallyar,” meaning an attendant on horses. The derivation of the word “hornada,” which we found given to the dry stretch between the Arkansas and Cimarron is equally obscure.