The dog did not relish the prospect of a ride with Joel. True, almost every dog enjoys a walk or a ride with even a human whom he does not love. But Treve was aware of a queer distaste for to-day’s jaunt. Perhaps he was warned by the sixth sense which puzzles so many collie-students. Perhaps the heat of the day and the glum company of Fenno made the outing seem less attractive than usual. Yet, obediently, even if not ecstatically, he loped along at the pony’s side. The mustang enjoyed the trip still less than did the collie. Fenno had no understanding of horses. He rode, as he did everything else; busily and unsparingly. He had no sympathy or sense of fellowship with his mount. To him, a horse was a machine which must be made to earn its cost and upkeep. He would have sworn derisively at any one who might have suggested to him the need of warming a horse’s bit on an icy morning or of dismounting during a ten-minute halt or of easing his mount over the heavy going of the sands or tethering him out of draughts and in the shade rather than in wind and sun. Horses understand such failings on the part of the men who use them. Thus, not a pony on the Dos Hermanos ranch bothered to lift head and to whinny when old Fenno clumped into the barn in the morning. Not one that did not toss back the head in fear of a fist-blow when Joel undertook to bridle him. His mount, to-day, was a temperamental little buckskin, Pancho by name, whose devil temper and inborn mischief had never been trained fully out of him. Royce Mack understood Pancho and got good service from him, in spite of the buckskin’s occasional phases of meanness. But Joel Fenno and Pancho had a steady hatred for each other. Joel had chosen the buckskin for to-day’s ride, because his own temper was still frayed from the night’s work and the morning’s squabble. Subconsciously, he yearned for something on which to vent his crankiness. He found himself watching for any trick or meanness on the part of Pancho which should warrant the liberal use of quirt and spur. When a man is looking for a fight, Destiny is prone to send one to him. Fenno had not ridden for more than two hours, when Pancho saw, or affected to see, something terrifying about a jack rabbit that bounded out of a sage-clump in front of the pony’s nose. Pancho went straight up into the air, wheeling half-way about, as he did so, and coming to earth again, stiff-legged, in a series of spine-jarring buck-jumps. The first of these banging impacts nearly unseated Fenno and wholly snapped the ill-tied cord which strapped the bundle of rations to the back of the saddle. So occupied was Joel with the punitive values of curb and quirt and heel that he did not observe the loss of his provisions and water bag.