There will not be much to do except the usual horse
breaking and a little repairing about the ranch. It's quite likely I
shan't be able to spare Tom in the early summer, for if no cattle buyers
come along soon, I'm going to send June to the coast and let him sniff
around for one. I'd like the best in the world to sell about three
thousand beeves, and we never had fatter ones than we have to-day. If we
can make a sale, it'll keep us busy all the fore part of the summer. So
both you fellows knock off any day you want to and go up to the city.
And go horseback, for this ranch don't give Bethel & Oxenford's stages
any more of its money."
With this encouragement, we decided to start for the city the next
morning. But that evening I concluded to give a certain roan gelding a
final ride before turning him over to the vaqueros. He was a vicious
rascal, and after trying a hundred manoeuvres to unhorse me, reared and
fell backward, and before I could free my foot from the stirrup, caught
my left ankle, fracturing several of the small bones in the joint. That
settled my going anywhere on horseback for a month, as the next morning
I could not touch my foot to the ground. John did not like to go alone,
and the mistress insisted that Theodore was well entitled to a vacation.
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