said cereal--an' runs up on a cow gent, spurs, gun-belt, big
hat an' the full regalia, hangin' to the limb of a cottonwood, dead as
George the Third, an' not a hundred foot from the ranch door. An' how
inside I finds a half-dozen more cow folks, lookin' grave an' sayin'
nothin'; an' the ranch manager has a bloody bandage about his for'ead,
an' another holdin' up his left arm, half bandage an' half sling, the
toot ensemble, as Colonel Sterett calls it, showin' sech recent war that
the blood's still wet on the cloths an' drops on the floor as we talks.
An' how none of us says a word about the dead gent in the cottonwood or
of the manager who's shot up; an' how that same manager outfits me with
ten sacks of mule-food an' I goes p'intin' out for the Southeast an'
forgets all I sees an' never mentions it ag'in.

"Then thar's Sim Booth of the Fryin' Pan outfit, who's one evenin' camped
with me at Antelope Springs; an' who saddles up an' ropes onto the laigs
of a dead Injun where they're stickin' forth--bein' washed free by the
rains--an' pulls an' rolls that copper-coloured departed outen his
sepulchre a lot, an' then starts his pony off at a canter an' sort o'
fritters the remains about the landscape. Sim does this on the argyment
that the obsequies, former, takes place too near the spring. This yere
Sim's pony two months later steps in a dog hole when him an' Sim's goin'
along full swing with some cattle on a stampede, an' the cayouse falls on
Sim an' breaks everything about him incloosive of his neck. The other
cow-punchers allers allow it's because Sim turns out that aborigine over
by Antelope Springs. Now sech a eepisode, properly elab'rated, might
feed your attention an' hold it spellbound some.

"Son, if I was to turn myse'f loose on, great an' little, the divers
incidents of the trail, it would consoome days in the relation. I could
tell of cactus flowers, blazin' an' brilliant as a eye of red fire ag'in
the brown dusk of the deserts; or of mile-long fields of Spanish bayonet
in bloom; or of some Mexican's doby shinin' like a rooby in the sunlight
a day's journey ahead, the same one onbroken mass from roof to ground of
the peppers they calls _chili_, all reddenin' in the hot glare of the day.

"Or, if you has a fancy for stirrin' incident an' lively scenes, thar's a
time when the rains has raised the old Canadian ontil that quicksand ford
at Tascosa--which has done eat a hundred teams if ever it swallows
one!--