He showed Bud where to turn the horses, and went to work on the pack rope, his crooked old fingers moving with the sureness of lifelong habit.

He was eager to know all the news that Bud could tell him, and when he discovered that Bud had just left the Muleshoe, and that he had been fired because of a fight with Dirk Tracy, the old fellow cackled gleefully, "Well, now, I guess you just about had yore hands full, young man," he commented shrewdly.

"Dirk ain't so easy to lick." Bud immediately wanted to know why it was taken for granted that he had whipped Dirk, and grandpa chortled again.

"Now if you hadn't of licked Dirk, you wouldn't of got fired," he retorted, and proceeded to relate a good deal of harmless gossip which seemed to bear out the statement.
Dirk Tracy, according to grandpa, was the real boss of the Muleshoe, and Bart was merely a figure-head.
All of this did not matter to Bud, but grandpa was garrulous.

A good deal of information Bud received while the two attended to the horses and loitered at the corral gate.
Grandpa admired Smoky, and looked him over carefully, with those caressing smoothings of mane and forelock which betray the lover of good horseflesh.
"I reckon he's purty fast," he said, peering shrewdly into Bud's face.
"The boys has been talking about pulling off some horse races here next Sunday--we got a good, straight, hard-packed creek-bed up here a piece that has been cleaned of rocks fer a mile track, and they're goin' to run a horse er two.