ock on the
ranch he'd take a rifle.

Poor Oscar! All noble and heroic sentiments struggling within him,
with no outlet but a hesitating advancing of the theory that "if we
didn't get rain before long, the country'd be awful dry." Small wonder
that he burst out in the bull-pen one night with "I wish the Injuns
would jump this ranch!"

"You do?" said Charley. "Well, durn your hide for that wish! What's
got into you to make you wish that?"

"Aw!" said Oscar, twitching around on his stool, "I'm sick and tired of
not being able to say anything. If the Sioux got up, I could do
something."

"Oh, that's it," retorted Charles. "Well, Oscar, far's I can see, if
it's necessary to have a war-party of Injuns whoopin' an' yellin' an'
crow-hoppin' an' makin' fancywork out of people to give you the proper
start afore your gal, it'd be jes' as well for you to stay single the
res' of your days. The results wouldn't justify the trouble."

Afterward Oscar told me in private that Charley was an old stiff, and
he didn't believe he'd make a chest at a grasshopper if the latter
spunked up any. That wronged old Charley. But Oscar must be
excused--he was a singularly unhappy man.

To come back to what happened. Oscar that morning had the care of
Geronimo, a coal-black, man-eating stallion, a brute as utterly devoid
of fear as of docility. A tiger kills to eat, and occasionally for the
fun of it; that horse killed out of ferocity, and hate of every living
thing.

A fearful beast is a bad horse. One really has more chance against a
tiger. Geronimo stood seventeen hands high, and weighed over sixteen
hundred pounds. When he reared on his hind legs and came for you,
screaming, his teeth snapping like bear-traps, his black mane flying, a
man seemed a pigmy. One blow from those front hoofs and your troubles
were over. Once down, he'd trample, bite, and kick until your own
mother would hesitate to claim the pile of rags and jelly left. He had
served two men so; nothing but his matchless beauty saved his life.

Nowhere could one find a better example of hell-beautiful than when he
tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black
panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a
colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of
his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most
horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of
the c