With a wild scurry of legs, the toad raced to the end of the string and struggled to escape; but, Bronco's finger touched its head and moved gently toward the jerking tail. The toad's eyes closed, his head drooped toward the ground, the legs and tail became motionless. Jamie gave a little squeal of delight, and cried, "He's gone to sleep!" "Hang onto the string a minit." Jamie clutched it, while Bronco held a consultation with the cook at the tail-board of the chuck-wagon. Soon he returned with a small, empty match-box. "This'll make a fine wagon," he announced, tying the match-box to the end of the string. "Now, thar we are! All you gotter do to make him move lively is run your finger 'long his back like I done, and contrarywise, from his head to his tail, if you want him to stop. When I was a kid in Texas, me an' my little brother uster catch 'em and have races this way." A grin spread over his face and he looked up at Nell, "Say, Mrs. Traynor, Maw hated horn-toads. Bill an' me rounded-up twenty of 'em once, and hid 'em in a closet in a box. The box got upsot someways in the night, and when Maw got up to start breakfast you never heerd such a whoop! She put her foot on one of 'em. It didn't hurt the toad for she took her foot off too quick, but Bill an me never brung any more into the house after that mornin'. You see, when she put down her other foot, she hit another toad, an' that room was jest naturally alive with 'em. We rounded-up the whole herd, twenty of 'em, but Maw said she knewed thar was a thousand and the rest of 'em got away." "I'm rather inclined to sympathize with your mother, Bronco," was Nell's laughing comment. She shuddered, "Those little sharp horns are bad enough to step on with a bare foot, but to feel the horns moving would be rather upsetting, I should think." "It was," Bronco rejoined soberly. "But Maw wasn't so upsot as we kids was--afterwards." Jamie devoted himself to his new pet, and Nell's eyes wandered to her husband and Doctor Powell who were talking with another man, not far away. She saw this man had a grizzly beard that seemed never to have been cropped or shaven. The dry skin of neck and throat was wrinkled and the texture and colour of a piece of Arizona jerky from long exposure to the sun and wind. On his head, an old straw hat was guiltless of a crown, but flaunted two dilapidated turkey quills. Tufts of unkempt hair peered inquisitively over the broken edges above the ragged brim. A grim mouth made a repository for a corn-cob pipe, and suspicious grey eyes squinted from Powell's face to that of the Boss of the Diamond H. Bronco saw her interest, and explained, "That's Paddy Lafferty, owns the PL ranch and herd, that the doctor figgers on buyin'," then Nell recalled the many stories she had already heard of this eccentric character. Paddy's eyes caught hers, and she flushed guiltily as she glanced away quickly.