"You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured.
"And you'll see the culls draying on the streets of San Francisco," Dick answered.
"Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of Los Angeles, and--why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for horse-prices--blue sky, and then some."
As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slender-legged, head-tossing Palomina, rode up to them and was introduced to Graham as Mr. Hennessy, the ranch veterinary.
"I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the colts," he explained to his employer, "and I rode across to give her a glance at The Fawn here. She'll be riding her in less than a week. What horse is she on to-day?"
"The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the comment that was prompt as the disapproving shake of Mr. Hennessy's head.
"I can never become converted to women riding stallions," muttered the veterinary. "The Fop is dangerous. Worse--though I take my hat off to his record--he's malicious and vicious. She--Mrs. Forrest ought to ride him with a muzzle--but he's a striker as well, and I don't see how she can put cushions on his hoofs."
"Oh, well," Dick placated, "she has a bit that is a bit in his mouth, and she's not afraid to use it--"
"If he doesn't fall over on her some day," Mr. Hennessy grumbled. "Anyway, I'll breathe easier when she takes to The Fawn here. Now she's a lady's mount--all the spirit in the world, but nothing vicious. She's a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and she'll steady down from her friskiness. But she'll always be a gay handful--no riding academy proposition."
"Let's ride over," Dick suggested. "Mrs. Forrest'll have a gay handful in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.--It's her territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house horses and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I can't understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the graybeard chemists."
The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a mile, turned up a wooded canyon where ran a spring-trickle of stream, and emerged on a wide rolling terrace rich in pasture. Graham's first glimpse was of a background of many curious yearling and two-year-old colts, against which, in the middleground, he saw his hostess, on the back of the bright bay thoroughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking his forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They reined in their mounts and watched.