For an hour it has leaped in Bill’s thoughts as an impulse to go across to the spreading cottonwood, propose himself to the Gray Wolf for the Saucy Paoli, and elicit reply. It would not be the Osage way, but Bill is not yet an Osage, and some reasonable allowance should be made by Gray Wolf for the rudeness of a paleface education. Such step would earn an answer, certain and complete. Your savage beateth not about the bush. His diplomacy is Bismarckian; it is direct and proceeds by straight lines. Thus chase Bill’s cogitations when the sudden sight of the Saucy Paoli and her glances, full of wist and warmth, fasten his gallant fancy and crystalize a resolution to act at once. “How!” observes Bill, by way of salutation, as he stands before Gray Wolf. That warrior grunts swinish, though polite, response. Then Bill goes directly to the core of his employ; he explains his passion, sets forth his hopes, and by dashing swoops arrives at the point which, according to Bill’s blunt theories, should quicken the interest of Gray Wolf, and says: “Now, what price? How many ponies?” “How many you give?” retorts the cautious Gray Wolf. “Fifteen.” Bill stands ready to go to thirty. “Ugh!” observes Gray Wolf, and then he looks out across the prairie grasses where the thick smoke shows the summer fires to be burning them far away. “Thirty ponies,” says Bill after a pause. These or their money equivalent--six hundred dollars--Bill knows to be a fat figure. He believes Gray Wolf will yield. But Bill is in partial error. Gray Wolf is not in any sordid, money frame. Your savage is a sentimentalist solely on two matters: those to touch his pride and those to wake his patriotism. And because of the recent triumph of the Poncas, and the consequent censures upon him now flaming, though hidden, in the common Osage heart, Gray Wolf’s pride is raw and throbbing. He looks up at Bill where he waits. “One pony!” says Gray Wolf. “One?” “But it must beat the Ponca’s roan.” Four hundred miles to the westward lie the broad ranges of the Triangle-Dot. Throughout all cow-land the ponies of the Triangle-Dot have name for speed. As far eastward as the Panhandle and westward to the Needles, as far southward as Seven Rivers and northward to the Spanish Peaks, has their fame been flung. About camp fires and among the boys of cows are tales told of Triangle-Dot ponies that overtake coyotes and jack-rabbits. More, they are exalted as having on a time raced even with an antelope. These ponies are children of a blue-grass sire, as thoroughbred as ever came out of Kentucky. Little in size, yet a ghost to go; his name was Redemption. These speedy mustang babies of Redemption have yet to meet their master in the whole southwest. And Bill knows of them; he has seen them run. “In two moons, my father,” says Bill.