“Mustang studhorse that ate Farron Blue. It’s been two years now and Farron has still got silver tubes where the horse ate him, to let the pus leak out. He used to be quite the ladies’ man, but it seems the women out here don’t want a fella that leaks. Anyhow, Farron would be the first to tell you, that black stud might be the best horse in Wyoming.”

“He’s only the best if you can break him.”

“Nobody is goin to break the black. I imagine there is young fellas who’d like to try, but the black would kick their heads in or die fightin.”

“So why are we jawin about a horse nobody can break?”

“Because that stallion got himself caught in one a these big government roundups. They go out with a hundred wranglers, make a big sweep, funnel ’em down to where they got fences a mile long, leadin to a corral that would hold a bull elephant. They got the black with his whole bunch, maybe sixty, seventy mustangs. Plenty Doors says they’re holdin at least three hundred head there, right next to the spur line for the railroad. They’re fixin to ship them off to a dog food factory in Boise City.”

“So what exactly did you have in mind, Spuds?”

“I thought you might want to steal the black.”

“Why would I want to steal a mustang that can’t be broke?”

“Well, not just him. I thought maybe you’d want to run off the whole bunch. Like the time you and Ezra and that old cowpoke Teeter Spawn stole them O-Bar horses.”

“That was way back in 1887, when I was a young pup. I don’t believe I’d care to repeat the experience. Stealin horses don’t always work out like you think it will.”

“It wouldn’t be stealin, exactly.”

“Exactly what would it be?”

“Plenty Doors wants to turn them mustangs loose.”

“If you turn ’em loose, they’d just round them up again.”

“We’d have to run them off someplace where it’s too damned hard to get at ’em to make it worthwhile. Plenty Doors thinks maybe up in the high country.”

“Wasn’t that where Farron ran into the black in the first place?”

“It was, but the horse must have drifted down to where he got caught in that sweep. I was thinking maybe take him up really high, up where you run into that outlaw O. T. Yonkee a long while ago.”

“That’s a helluva ride, pushin two or three hundred head that high. It was a hard ride fifty years ago, when all we had to worry about was our saddle horses.”

“Are you sayin it can’t be done?”

“Oh, no. I expect it can, but there’s got to be some easier way. You could go see them government fellas and find out if the black is for sale.”