IX
THE TALE OF BRAZOS DICK
He was always known as Brazos Dick. Like so many of the men in the West, and for the matter of that the men in all other places, he was for ever shooting off his mouth about the glories of the place he had come from. He said that the feed on the range at the back of Ennis Creek was a fraud compared with that on the Brazos River, especially on the North Fork where he had been born. He was also of opinion that the horses in that neighbourhood were away above any horses raised within a hundred miles of the Colorado, on which river Painted Rock stands. He also said that no man's father came within a thousand miles of his father either as a man or a "buckero," which was his way of pronouncing "vaquero." He also let on that
195
