ck about things. He will want
me back after he has swallowed a litter tincture of time. It is the best
dose I know.

"Now to answer your questions. Yes the Emmily hen might have ate loco
weed if hens do. I never saw anything but stock and horses get poisoned
with loco weed. No the school is not built yet. They are always big
talkers on Bear Creek. No I have not seen Steve. He is around but I
am sorry for him. Yes I have been to Medicine Bow. I had the welcom I
wanted. Do you remember a man I played poker and he did not like it? He
is working on the upper ranch near Ten Sleep. He does not amount to a
thing except with weaklings. Uncle Hewie has twins. The boys got him
vexed some about it, but I think they are his. Now that is all I know
to-day and I would like to see you poco presently as they say at Los
Cruces. There's no sense in you being sick."

The rest of this letter discussed the best meeting point for us should I
decide to join him for a hunt.

That hunt was made, and during the weeks of its duration something was
said to explain a little more fully the Virginian's difficulty at the
Sunk Creek Ranch, and his reason for leaving his excellent employer the
Judge. Not much was said, to be sure; the Virginian seldom spent many
words upon his own troubles. But it appeared that owing to some jealousy
of him on the part of the foreman, or the assistant foreman, he found
himself continually doing another man's work, but under circumstances so
skilfully arranged that he got neither credit nor pay for it. He would
not stoop to telling tales out of school. Therefore his ready and
prophetic mind devised the simple expedient of going away altogether.
He calculated that Judge Henry would gradually perceive there was a
connection between his departure and the cessation of the satisfactory
work. After a judicious interval it was his plan to appear again in the
neighborhood of Sunk Creek and await results.

Concerning Steve he would say no more than he had written. But it was
plain that for some cause this friendship had ceased.

Money for his services during the hunt he positively declined to accept,
asserting that he had not worked enough to earn his board. And the
expedition ended in an untravelled corner of the Yellowstone Park,
near Pitchstone Canyon, where he and young Lin McLean and others
were witnesses of a sad and terrible drama that has been elsewhere
chronicled.

His prophetic mind had foreseen correctly the sha