"I'd had my eye on him all the year, and so had some of the other boys who had sighted the band, for you could see, even when he was a colt, what he was going to be.

The wild horses were getting rather too numerous that season, and we planned a chase to thin them out a little, as we do every two or three years.

Of course, everybody was after the black; and one day, along toward the end of the chase, when the different bands had been broken up and scattered pretty much, I ran onto him.

I was trailing an old gray up that draw--the way we went to-day, you know, and all at once I met him as he was coming over the top of the hill, right where you and I rode onto him.

It was all so sudden that for a minute he was rattled as bad as I was; and, believe me, I was shaking like a leaf.