Dunne driving, the car carried us out of Corkscrew at the street’s southern end, and then west along the sandy and rocky bottom of a shallow draw. The sand was deep and the rocks were numerous; we didn’t make very good time. An hour and a half of jolting, sweltering and smothering in this draw, and we climbed up out of it and crossed to a larger and greener draw, where the mesquite grew in small trees and bees zizzed among wild flowers.
Around a bend in this draw the Circle H.A.R. buildings sat. We got out of the automobile under a low shed, where another car already stood. A heavily muscled, heavily boned man came around a whitewashed building toward us. His face was square and dark. His close-clipped mustache and deep-set small eyes were dark.
This, I learned, was Peery, who bossed the ranch for the owner, who lived in the East.
“He wants a nice, mild horse,” Milk River told Peery, “and we thought maybe you might sell him that Rollo horse of yours. That’s the nicest, mildest horse I ever heard tell of.”
Peery tilted his high-crowned sombrero back on his head and rocked on his heels.
“What was you figuring on paying for this here horse?”
“If it suits me,” I said, “I’m willing to pay what it takes to buy him.”
“That ain’t so bad,” he said. “S’pose one of you boys dab a rope on that buckskin and bring him around for the gent to look at.”