It did seem as though after the little brute had been half choked to death he ought to be willing to trot along behind Poke; but not so. Stone Fence fell down on his knees, flopped over on his side, and allowed himself to be dragged in that position. “Say!” gasped the sweating Dig, “he’ll be worn as thin as paper if he keeps that up. By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I’ll beat that little nuisance!” He dismounted and cut two long willow sprouts. The maverick began to graze. Nothing seemed to disturb its appetite. In that possession it and Digby Fordham were brothers, and Chet, with gravity, pointed this fact out. “Brothers?” sniffed Dig. “You can bet we are brothers in another way. That dogy is obstinate; but so am I. You watch me!” He mounted into the saddle again. He stuck one willow wand into his bootleg for emergency, and then used the other to prod the maverick. The latter didn’t like this. He kept ahead of the point of the willow wand which, whenever he lagged, poked between his hind legs. Chet almost fell out of his saddle from laughing at the performance; and Poke looked as disgusted as a mustang can look. That calf plunging along the trail just ahead of Poke’s nose disgruntled the spirited horse. Chet led the march, the maverick came next, and Dig brought up an active rear. “What won’t be led must be driven,” quoth Dig, now quite himself again. “All aboard for Grub Stake again, Chet, my boy.” “My goodness!” exclaimed his chum, rather exasperated. “When do you think we’ll ever get there at this rate?” They made fair time, however, considering the obstacles during a part of the afternoon. Chet galloped away off the trail at sight of a small herd of deer, and managed to get near enough to shoot a young doe. He cut its throat, and let it bleed well, and then flung it over the saddle and cantered back to the trail. Dig was rather disappointed because he had not had any of the fun of stalking the deer. Chet pointed out the fact that Dig had the maverick, saying: “There is compensation in everything, my boy. You have that pet to play with; I don’t own any maverick. You don’t hear me kicking—” “Oh, go on!” growled Dig. There was one good thing about Digby Fordham: he never really held rancour; and he could take a joke as well as give one. Of course he knew that he had caught a Tartar in the yearling; but he would not give him up. Before the afternoon was gone Stone Fence had learned that it was better to walk more or less sedately along the trail than to be poked with a sharp pole. Their pace was not rapid; but they got through the pass between the hills after a time. It was just before they left the pass and as the wider plain beyond broke upon their view that Dig spied a grey animal sitting on a rock ahead of them, and some distance off the trail. “What do you call that, Chet?” he cried. “Looks like an old woman with a nightcap on—only she’s got two tassels on the cap and they stick up straight.”