kept going.

"I ain't wishin' old José any hard luck," muttered Pete, "but I said
I'd send a boy--and that there walkin' dream _looks_ like one, anyhow.
'Oh, mañana!'" he snorted. "Mexicans is mostly figurin' out to-day
what they 're goin' to do to-morrow, and they never git through
figurin'. I dunno who my father and mother was, but I know one
thing--they wa'n't Mexicans."




CHAPTER IX

ROWDY--AND BLUE SMOKE

It has been said that Necessity is the mother of Invention--well, it
goes without saying that the cowboy is the father, and Pete was closely
related to these progenitors of that most necessary adjunct of success.
Moreover, he could have boasted a coat of arms had he been at all
familiar with heraldry and obliged to declare himself.

[Illustration: Pete.]

A pinto cayuse rampant; a longhorn steer regardant; two sad-eyed,
unbranded calves couchant--one in each corner of the shield to kind of
balance her up; gules, several clumps of something representing
sagebrush; and possibly a rattlesnake coiled beneath the sagebrush and
described as "repellent" and holding in his open jaws a streaming motto
reading, "I'm a-comin'."