great flights
in the trees overhead, whipping the branches with their wings in search
of footing, they frequently fell to the ground at our feet.

Gallup and I returned to camp early. Before we had skinned our kill the
others had all come in, disgusted with the ease with which they
had filled their bags. We soon had two pots filled and on the fire
parboiling, while Tiburcio lined two ovens with pastry, all ready for
the baking. In a short time two horsemen, attracted by our fire, crossed
the river below our camp and rode up.

"Hello, Uncle Lance," lustily shouted one of them, as he dismounted.
"It's you, is it, that's shooting my pigeons? All right, sir, I'll stay
all night and help you eat them. I had figured on riding back to the
Frio to-night, but I've changed my mind. Got any horse hobbles here?"
The two men, George Nathan and Hugh Trotter, were accommodated with
hobbles, and after an exchange of commonplace news of the country, we
settled down to story-telling. Trotter was a convivial acquaintance of
Aaron Scales, quite a vagabond and consequently a story-teller. After
Trotter had narrated a late dream, Scales unlimbered and told one of his
own.

"I remember a dream I had several years ago, and the only way I can
account for it was, I had been drinking more or less during the day.
I dreamt I was making a long ride across a dreary desert, and towards
night it threatened a bad storm. I began to look around for some
shelter. I could just see the tops of a clump of trees beyond a hill,
and rode hard to get to them, thinking that there might be a house
amongst them. How I did ride! But I certainly must have had a poor
horse, for I never seemed to get any nearer that timber. I rode and
rode, but all this time, hours and hours it seemed, and the storm
gathering and scattering raindrops falling, the timber seemed scarcely
any nearer.

"At last I managed to reach the crest of the hill. Well, sir, there
wasn't a tree in sight, only, under the brow of the hill, a deserted
adobe _jacal_, and I rode for that, picketed my horse and went in. The
_jacal_ had a thatched roof with several large holes in it, and in the
fireplace burned a roaring fire. That was some strange, but I didn't
mind it and I was warming my hands before the fire and congratulating
myself on my good luck, when a large black cat sprang from the outside
into an open window, and said: 'Pardner, it looks like a bad night
outside.'

"I eyed him a little sus