sideways, in token of struck colours--a sign of surrender disregarded
by his enemy, who thought the giving of signals to cease fighting a
prerogative of his office. Away went the old cows and the work-steers
and the horses, in a thundering circuit of the corral, the horned stock
bawling in terror, and Billy Buck "boosting" every one of them
impartially. We cheered him.

"Gad! I'm glad I didn't slit his windpipe!" said Steve. "He's a
corker!"

Billy drove his circus parade around about six times before his proud
soul was satisfied. Then he took the centre of the ring, and bellowed
a chant of victory in a fuller voice than he had given before, while
the other brutes, gathered by the fence, looked at him in stupefaction.

Only once more did Billy Buck figure in history before he left us for a
larger field in town, and on this occasion, for the first and last time
in his career, he got the worst of it.

A lone Injun came to the ranch--a very tall, grave man, clad in
comic-picture clothes. A battered high hat surmounted his block of
midnight hair, and a cutaway coat, built for a man much smaller around
the chest, held his torso in bondage. As it was warm on the day he
arrived, he had discarded his trousers--a breech-clout was plenty
leg-gear, he thought. He bore a letter of recommendation from a white
friend.

"Plenty good letter--_leela ouashtay ota_," said he, as he handed the
missive over. I read it aloud for the benefit of the assembled ranch.
It ran:

"This is Jimmy-hit-the-bottle, the worst specimen of a bad tribe. He
will steal anything he can lift. If he knew there was such a thing as
a cemetery, he'd walk fifty miles to rob it. Any citizen wishing to do
his country a service will kindly hit him on the head with an axe.

"JACK FORSYTHE."

"Plenty good letter--_ota_!" cried the Injun, his face beaming with
pride.

[Illustration: "Jimmy-hit-the-bottle"]

I coughed, and said it was indeed vigorous; Steve and the boys fled the
scene. Now, we knew that Jimmy was a good Injun, or he wouldn't have
had any letter at all; that great, grave face, coupling the seriousness
of childhood and of philosophy, simply offered an irresistible
temptation to the writer of the letter. There was something pathetic
in the way the gigantic savage folded up his treasure and replaced it
in his coat. I think Forsythe would have weakened had he seen it.
Still, after we laughed, we felt all the better disposed toward