early exhausted; and as old Dave
looked up and saw Colonel Andrews occupying the throne, he rebelled and
refused to salute, when the angel wrathfully led him back to the gate
and kicked him out among his dogs."

Jack Splann told a yarn about the friendship of a pet lamb and dog which
he owned when a boy. It was so unreasonable that he was interrupted on
nearly every assertion. Long before he had finished, Sponsilier checked
his narrative and informed him that if he insisted on doling out fiction
he must have some consideration for his listeners, and at least tell it
within reason. Splann stopped right there and refused to conclude
his story, though no one but myself seemed to regret it. I had a true
incident about a dog which I expected to tell, but the audience had
become too critical, and I kept quiet. As it was evident that no more
dog stories would be told, the conversation was allowed to drift at
will. The recent shooting on the North Platte had been witnessed by
nearly every one present, and was suggestive of other scenes.

"I have always contended," said Dorg Seay, "that the man who can control
his temper always shoots the truest. You take one of these fellows that
can smile and shoot at the same time--they are the boys that I want to
stand in with. But speaking of losing the temper, did any of you ever
see a woman real angry,--not merely cross, but the tigress in her raging
and thirsting to tear you limb from limb? I did only once, but I have
never forgotten the occasion. In supreme anger the only superior to this
woman I ever witnessed was Captain Cartwright when he shot the slayer of
his only son. He was as cool as a cucumber, as his only shot proved, but
years afterward when he told me of the incident, he lost all control
of himself, and fire flashed from his eyes like from the muzzle of a
six-shooter. 'Dorg,' said he, unconsciously shaking me like a terrier
does a rat, his blazing eyes not a foot from my face, 'Dorg, when I shot
that cowardly ---- -- -- ----, I didn't miss the centre of his forehead
the width of my thumb nail.'

"But this woman defied a throng of men. Quite a few of the crowd had
assisted the night before in lynching her husband, and this meeting
occurred at the burying-ground the next afternoon. The woman's husband
was a well-known horse-thief, a dissolute, dangerous character, and had
been warned to leave the community. He lived in a little village, and
after darkness the evening before,