systems of oral if not verbal communication
existed among mules, and that you had listened for hours to their gossip.
Give me the history of one of your freighting trips and what befell along
the trail; and don't forget the comment thereon--wise, doubtless, it
was--of your long-eared servants of the rein and trace-chain."

"Tell you what chances along the trail? Son, you-all opens a wide-flung
range for my mem'ry to graze over. I might tell you how I'm lost once,
freightin' from Vegas into the Panhandle, an' am two days without
water--blazin' Jooly days so hot you couldn't touch tire, chain, or
bolt-head without fryin' your fingers. An' how at the close of the
second day when I hauls in at Cabra Springs, I lays down by that cold an'
blessed fountain an' drinks till I aches. Which them two days of thirst
terrorises me to sech degrees that for one plumb year tharafter, I never
meets up with water when I don't drink a quart, an' act like I'm layin'
in ag'in another parched spell.

"Or I might relate how I stops over one night from Springer on my way to
the Canadian at a Triangle-dot camp called Kingman. This yere is a
one-room stone house, stark an' sullen an' alone on the desolate plains,
an' no scenery worth namin' but a half-grown feeble spring. This Kingman
ain't got no windows; its door is four-inch thick of oak; an' thar's
loopholes for rifles in each side which shows the sports who builds that
edifice in the stormy long-ago is lookin' for more trouble than comfort
an' prepares themse'fs. The two cow-punchers I finds in charge is scared
to a standstill; they allows this Kingman's ha'nted. They tells me how
two parties who once abides thar--father an' son they be--gets downed by
a hold-up whose aim is pillage, an' who comes cavortin' along an'
butchers said fam'ly in their sleep. The cow-punchers declar's they
hears the spooks go scatterin' about the room as late as the night before
I trails in. I ca'ms 'em--not bein' subject to nerve stampedes myse'f,
an' that same midnight when the sperits comes ha'ntin' about ag'in, I
turns outen my blankets an' lays said spectres with the butt of my mule
whip--the same when we strikes a light an' counts 'em up bein' a couple
of kangaroo rats. This yere would front up for a mighty thrillin' tale
if I throws myse'f loose with its reecital an' daubs in the colour plenty
vivid an' free.

"Then thar's the time I swings over to the K-bar-8 ranch for corn--bein'
I'm out of