Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1929-06-27

IN TWO ~PARTS-PART ONE
TUD first spotted her away up or
Two Buttes creek at the south enc
% OF the Frying Pans range, in March
when the buffalo sod was just begin
ming to smell fresh at midday as the
trickleS of ice water chuckled dowr
from the melting snow banks. She was
a short yearling and had a winter coat
three inches long, shaggy as a grizzly
But every owe she made, even to the
nervous toss of her head to shake 8
precocious forelock out OF her eyes, was
graceful as a dancer.
Jud reined old Shorty into the shell
ter Of a willow clump and sat there
and Toasted his eyes.
She was with q bunch of smokeys,
wild ones, her mother and five other
mares and three other last years colts
all following a shaggy blue roan stud
that carried a brand from away down
in southern New Mexico. They'd drift
ed north. somehow; or maybe only the
stud had drifted north and had gath
cred the mare along the way. At any
rate. they'd lodged horse hunters and
fought Billiards. coyotes, bobcats, and
starvation. And this far they'd won
out.
The graceful yearling was a misty
sort OF b%lue-gray. shading almost to
white in spots, and had a name and
tail as pretty a cleaning silver as you
ever saw on the trimmings of a fol-de-
rol rodeo saddle.
"Gadl' Jud murmured to Shorty.
She's Just ike a chunk of dawn, amt
she? Darned near too pretty to look
at very long. Dawn, that's what we'll
call her. old boy. Silver Dawn. And
if We don't lay our rope on her, Shorty
old boy, nobody else Will"
For half an hour Jud sat and
watched and twice he was tempted TO
shake out his rope, give old Shorty his
head and take after the Dawn young
Ster. Then he thought of the heavy
going, the soggy sod, and the fact that
while Shorty was good for an all day
Jaunt and was an Al cutting horse, he
wasn't exactly what one might call
fleet. Twenty jumps and little Dawn
would leave old Shorty like a prong
horn leaves a house dog. She could
run, that baby. Look at the length of
those fine legs, at her long. supple
ankles, at the powerful pair of hips on
herl She could run like a jack rabbit!
And at last Jud swung old Shorty
back out of the willows, up to the hill
side.
They saw him. The blue stud snorted.
flung up his ugly head. The mares,
four of them heavy with foal. trotted
o%bediently up the hollow. And the
yearlings, led by Dawn, sped away with
a regular circus display of wheeling,
side jumping, snorting and general
showing off. Could she run? Cad!
She had legs on her like wings! Even
among those other 1.-THE youngsters she
showed up like a swallow among a flock
OF crows.
Jud watched. entranced, until the
whole bunch of them had trooped away
over the hill and out of sight. Then
he turned with a lump in his throat
and a hint of moisture in his eyes. For
Jud was the son of Marie La Tour, who
had come to Colorado to paint noun
tains, and who had died, ~heartbroken
on a lonely homestead, leaving a gray
eyed, wondering boy of ten who
watched the crimson sunsets anc
dreamed of great, bearded knights who
rode chargers like elephants to save
lily white maidens from monster ogres
Jud watched this Dawn colt, thrilled
to his very boot-tips. For Jud also
was the son of Grey Milholland, who
loved horses as Marie loved mountains
and whose good looks were as great a.
his wanderlust, his eternal quest for
beauty of far places, of strange women
for a richness of life that he never
found. For two years he quarreled with
Marie on the homestead and driftec
aWay-deserted her, most said-he wa
found dead under a now bank not two
miles from the homestead where Marie
had died Of pneumonia and a broker
heart-died only a week before. Grey
had come back. too late. And The
neighbors buried him beside Marie ovel
on the hill where she used to sit anc
watch the sunset.
Little Jud didn't understand much O
the goings on. But when he was givef
the choice OF going to live with prim
starched old Mrs. Baron, whose son raj
of going with Pat DOnlin, Jud didn'
hesitate. He went with Pat. Pat wa:
sixty. Pat was a widoWer; there WASH
a woman or Pats ranch. But Pat ha(
two thousand head of horses.
Almost before he had lost his mill
teeth Jud was spending the bulk o
CdIll Ody III tllt SdUOlC. ht tWClFC III
could ride with the best of the punch
ers. And at fifteen he could stick tt
anything that grew on Donlin's range
There's something damned quar-
about the way the daddy rides" old Pa
once said to his foreman. ut ain
work for limits not play, neither
It's just a part of life. He kind of be
longs in the saddle, and he knows il
Him on a horse looks like an eagle il
the sky-like he's doin what the goo
Lord cut him out for, and like he,
been dom it a hell Of a long while"
! The whole truth was that Jud wa
> an artist, but instead of singing o
painting or writing poetry, he rod
horses.
i Jud probably would have lived witt
: Pat all his life, and would have grow
. into a lazy, vain, useless rider, pam
: pered and spoiled, spineless and petu
E liant. But the spring Jud was seven
. teen Pat got caught in a cold rair
! and a week later he wheezed his las
through pneumonia clogged lung.
S The old man had scarcely been de
PERSONAL
s correspondence. Not matrimonial club. Pal
ticulars free. Seattle Social League, BOX 1876
Seattle, Wash.