The excitement of the game, and the lure of the desert, and the love of a horse were what kept him at the profitless work.

His type was rare in the uplands.
These were the early days of the settlement of Utah, and only a few of the hardiest and most adventurous pioneers had penetrated the desert in the southern part of that vast upland.

And with them came some of that wild breed of riders to which Slone and the Stewarts belonged.

Horses were really more important and necessary than men; and this singular fact gave these lonely riders a calling.
Before the Spaniards came there were no horses in the West.

Those explorers left or lost horses all over the southwest.