t company more
and more agreeable. That he had spells of talking, I had already learned
at Medicine Bow. But his present taciturnity might almost have effaced
this impression, had I not happened to pass by the bunk-house one
evening after dark, when Honey Wiggin and the rest of the cow-boys were
gathered inside it.

That afternoon the Virginian and I had gone duck shooting. We had
found several in a beaver dam, and I had killed two as they sat close
together; but they floated against the breastwork of sticks out in the
water some four feet deep, where the escaping current might carry them
down the stream. The Judge's red setter had not accompanied us, because
she was expecting a family.

"We don't want her along anyways," the cowpuncher had explained to me.
"She runs around mighty irresponsible, and she'll stand a prairie-dog
'bout as often as she'll stand a bird. She's a triflin' animal."

My anxiety to own the ducks caused me to pitch into the water with
all my clothes on, and subsequently crawl out a slippery, triumphant,
weltering heap. The Virginian's serious eyes had rested upon this
spectacle of mud; but he expressed nothing, as usual.

"They ain't overly good eatin'," he observed, tying the birds to his
saddle. "They're divers."

"Divers!" I exclaimed. "Why didn't they dive?"

"I reckon they was young ones and hadn't experience."

"Well," I said, crestfallen, but attempting to be humorous, "I did the
diving myself."

But the Virginian made no comment. He handed me my double-barrelled
English gun, which I was about to leave deserted on the ground
behind me, and we rode home in our usual silence, the mean little
white-breasted, sharp-billed divers dangling from his saddle.

It was in the bunk-house that he took his revenge. As I passed I heard
his gentle voice silently achieving some narrative to an attentive
audience, and just as I came by the open window where he sat on his bed
in shirt and drawers, his back to me, I heard his concluding words,
"And the hat on his haid was the one mark showed yu' he weren't a
snappin'-turtle."

The anecdote met with instantaneous success, and I hurried away into the
dark. The next morning I was occupied with the chickens. Two hens were
fighting to sit on some eggs that a third was daily laying, and which
I did not want hatched, and for the third time I had kicked Em'ly off
seven potatoes she had rolled together and was determined to raise I
know not what sort of fam