The crowd was disappointed, they felt they wasn't getting their money's worth, and there was hollers of "take him away and hook him up on a milk wagon," or "sell him for a lady's saddle horse," and so on.--It was queer, but only natural, to notice that them loud mouth remarks was passed only by the most useless, and of the kind that's plum helpless whenever away from their home grounds. Others hollered more to kind of show off, but the looks they'd get from the sensible folks around only went to prove that the show off was of just plain _ignorance_. The cowboy rode The Cougar till the other side of the grounds was reached. There he stopped him and climbed off, and hearing the hurrahs from the grandstand, he touched the horse on the neck and says: "Never mind, old horse, you've done yours--and I'd liked mighty well if I could of turned you loose amongst that bunch that's making all that noise up there, and watch 'em scatter,--but you're not fighting any more." The rodeo was on its last day, the prizes was handed out that night, and the next morning the bucking horses was loaded in the stock cars on the way for some other town where another rodeo was going to be pulled off. In them box cars there was one place where The Cougar had stood while on the road, but this time, and in that same place was a grey horse who snorted as the train begin to move--The Cougar had been left behind, and from the inside of the stock yards watched the train pull out of sight. CHAPTER XIII "A MANY-MEN HORSE" The Cougar being he was useless for rodeo purposes, had been sold to the livery stable man for twenty-five dollars. It was figgered that at least twenty-five dollars worth of use would be got out of him there,--the horse was fat and strong looking, could be broke to harness, and made to do his share with any of the six and eight horse teams which was kept on the road acrost the deserts as freight teams. But one day, and before the harness ever disgraced The Cougar's hide, a bunch of tourists had flocked into town to stay for a spell, and one of the crowd suggested a little horseback riding. The livery stable man was at once swamped with orders for saddle horses, and before he got thru tallying up how many he could furnish, he found he was short of about three. By scouting around, he dug up two more, but he was still short one, and then his eye fell on the mouse colored horse. At first, he was for overlooking that horse entirely, but as he needed one more to finish up the party, he couldn't very well afford to overlook any horse that might do. He caught the horse and saddled him, and scared but game, he got in the saddle. If that pony still had one jump left in him, it was up to that old boy to find out, and one jump from _that horse_ would be that much too many. He'd never do for no tourist then.