There were hills where Selmer cattle were wild as deer--cattle that never heard the whistle of a locomotive until they were trailed down to the railroad to market.
These made the money for Selmer and his Company.

But it was the Rolling R, where the profits were smaller, that stood closest to Sudden's heart.
There was not so much money in horses as there was in sheep; Sudden admitted it readily enough.

But he hated sheep; hated the sound of them and the smell of them and the insipid, questioning faces of them.

And he loved horses; loved the big-jointed, wabbly legged colts and the round-bodied, anxious mothers; loved the grade geldings and fillies and the registered stock that he kept close to home in fenced pastures; loved the broom-tail bronks that ranged far afield and came in a dust cloud moiling up from their staccato hoof beats, circled by hoarse, shouting riders seen vaguely through the cloud.
There was a thrill in watching a corral full of wild horses milling round and round, dodging the whispering ropes that writhed here and there overhead to settle and draw tight over some unlucky head.

There was a thrill in the taming--more thrills than dollars, for until the war overseas brought eager buyers, the net profits of the horse ranch would scarcely have paid for Mary V's clothes and school and what she demurely set down as "recreation." But Sudden loved it, and Mary V loved it, and Mary V's mother loved whatever they loved.