But within these miles of barbed wire
boundaries the brood mares with their growing progeny lived as free and
untamed as their wild cousins on the unfenced lands about them. The
colts, except for one painful experience, when they were roped and
branded, from the day of their birth until they were ready to be broken
were never handled.
On the morning following his meeting with the stranger on the Divide
Phil Acton, with two of his cowboy helpers, rode out to the big pasture
to bring in the band.
The owner of the Cross-Triangle always declared that Phil was intimately
acquainted with every individual horse and head of stock between the
Divide and Camp Wood Mountain, and from Skull Valley to the Big Chino.
In moments of enthusiasm the Dean even maintained stoutly that his young
foreman knew as well every coyote, fox, badger, deer, antelope, mountain
lion, bobcat and wild horse that had home or hunting ground in the
country over which the lad had ridden since his babyhood. Certain it is
that "Wild Horse Phil," as he was called by admiring friends--for
reasons which you shall hear--loved this work and life to which he was
born.
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