Pratt was soft and red in the face and wore his badge pinned on the outside of a buffalo coat though the day was warm. He did not get off his horse. He told her he was very sorry for her loss and that it gave him no pleasure to say what he had come to say. There had been a complaint. A horse that had killed one man and crippled two more was a danger to the public, and the territory took a view of such things. He had a paper. Six men of the district had signed it.
"Which six?" said Josephine.
He looked at Bannock, and Bannock looked at the sky.
"It don't signify which six, ma'am. The point is the paper."
"Mr. Crane's name wouldn't be on it?"
"It's a free country," said Pratt, getting redder. "Any man can sign what he likes. Now, I'm prepared to be fair about it. Lyle here tells me you've took a liking to the horse. Well, that's natural in a lady. So we've brought Mr. Tillery out from Rawlins. Kansas Jack Tillery. You might have heard of him."
The man on the paint touched his hat. He was small and bowlegged and walnut-colored, with a broken nose and the patient eyes of somebody who had been thrown off a great many things and had got back on most of them. "Ma'am," he said.
"Mr. Tillery has rode horses in Abilene and Ogallala and Miles City that nobody else would get within a rope's length of," Pratt went on. "Tomorrow at noon he'll give the blue horse a fair ride. If he stays on, why then, the horse is a horse, and I'll tear up the paper. If he don't, I'll do my duty, and I'll do it quick and clean, and that'll be the end of it."
"And if I say no?"
"Then I'll do it today," said Pratt, "and you can take it up with the judge in Rawlins in the November term."
Bannock spoke for the first time. "It's a fair offer, Mrs. Hale." His voice was gentle. "Fairer than I'd have made. Kansas will ride him in the old man's rig. Same saddle Amos rode him in eight years. That's the fairest thing there is. If he's going to be a horse for anybody, it'll be in that saddle."