parral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned
the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or
two Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried
a brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at
Cibolo. And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the
ranches between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the
head of his rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning
his sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and
broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with
his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his
fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like
the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the
bitter taste to life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his
lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last
youthful survivor of the other end of the feud.

For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling
of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the
cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a
doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair
for the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.

From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping
stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green,
billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned
with nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite
flat wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old
government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest
elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of
sunshine.

That evening ears were quicker than eyes.

The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin
against tin.

"One waggeen," said he, "cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel.
Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo."

"You've got good ears, Gregorio," said Mustang Taylor. "I never heard
nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin'
across the peaceful dell."

In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin'
right above the fur end of the flat."

"You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio, smiling.

Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the
mes