Privately, Midnight preferred the Forest Reserve.

It was a pleasant, soft life in these pinewood pastures.

Even if it was pretty dull for a good cow-horse after the Free Range, it was easier on old bones.

And though Midnight was not insensible to the compliment Pete had paid him by picking him from the bunch for these long excursions to the Southland deserts, he missed the bunch.
They had been together a long time, the bunch; Pete had brought them from the Block Ranch, over in New Mexico.

They were getting on in years, and so was Pete.