They piled brush where
the wire had parted, filling the opening with an almost impassable
barrier of twisted branches. Until the last rain, the spring-hole fence
had appeared solid--but one night of rain in the California hills can
work unimaginable changes in trail, stream-bed, or fence line.
"Get after that fence first thing in the morning," said Williams as he
unsaddled the pinto that afternoon. "I noticed the blunder colt followed
us up to the spring. If there's any way of gettin' bogged, he'll find
it, or invent a new way for himself."
The blunder colt's mischief-making amounted to absolute genius. There
was much of the enterprising puppy in his nature and in his methods. The
impulse which seemed to direct the extremely uneven tenor of his way
would have resolved itself orally into: "Do it--and then see what
happens!" He was not vicious, but brainlessly joyful in his mischief.
As the foreman and Collie disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, the
colt, who had watched them with absurdly stupid intensity, lowered his
head and nibbled indifferently at the grass along the edge of the
spring-hole fence. He approached the break and sniffed at the props and
network of branches.
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