It happened very simply. Ambling along with eyes for little but the wild land that surrounded, with reins held carelessly in lax fingers, I was an easy victim. As before remarked, I can put forward no better explanation than a streak of “cussedness” in my red mount. Suffice it to relate, that all at once I found my steed performing a series of diabolic evolutions, and in some mysterious manner he and I parted company in a final burst of rapid-fire contortions. I have since heard and read much of the Western horse and his unique method of unseating a rider, but never yet have I seen justice done the subject. Nor shall I descant long on such an unpleasant theme. Let me simply record the fact that I came to earth ungracefully, with a jarring shock, much as an importunate suitor might be presumed to descend the front steps of his inamorata’s home, when assisted therefrom by the paternal toe. And when I sat up, a freshly-bruised and crestfallen youth, it was to behold Red clattering over a little hillock, head up, stirrups swinging wide. He seemed in hot haste. Like a fool I had knotted the reins together for easier holding; with them looped upon his neck he felt as much at liberty as though stripped clean of riding-gear. It looked like a dubious prospect. Upon second thought I decided that it could easily have been worse. A broken leg, say, would have been a choice complication. My bones, however, remained intact. So I sought about in the grass for the pistol that had been jolted from its place during the upheaval, and when I found it betook myself upon the way my erratic nag had gone. It was no difficult matter for me to arrive at the conclusion that I was in a fair way to go into the Northwest afoot—should I be lucky enough to arrive at all. Red seemed to have gone into hiding. At least, he remained unseen, though I ascended divers little eminences and stared my hardest, realizing something of the hopelessness of my quest even while I stared. That Sweet Grass country is monstrously deceptive to the unsophisticated. Overlooking it from a little height one thinks he sees immense areas of gently undulating plain; and he sees truly. But when he comes to traverse this smooth sea of land that ripples away to a far skyline, it is a horse of another color, I assure you. He has not taken thought of what tricks the clear air and the great spaces have played with his perspective. The difference between looking over fifty miles of grassland and crossing the same is the difference between viewing a stretch of salt water from a convenient point ashore and being out in a two-oared skiff bucking the sway-backed rollers that heave up from the sea.