adobe
wall. Of course Sang went for the wall. There, finding his nails
would not stick, he fled down the length of it, his queue streaming,
his eyes popping, his talons curved toward an ideal of safety,
gibbering strange monkey talk, pursued a scant arm's length behind by
that infuriated cow. Did any one help him? Not any. Every man of
that crew was hanging weak from laughter to the horn of his saddle or
the top of the fence. The preternatural solemnity had broken to little
bits. Men came running from the bunk-house, only to go into spasms
outside, to roll over and over on the ground, clutching handfuls of
herbage in the agony of their delight.

At the end of the corral was a narrow chute. Into this Sang escaped as
into a burrow. The cow came too. Sang, in desperation, seized a pole,
but the cow dashed such a feeble weapon aside. Sang caught sight of a
little opening, too small for cows, back into the main corral. He
squeezed through. The cow crashed through after him, smashing the
boards. At the crucial moment Sang tripped and fell on his face. The
cow missed him by so close a margin that for a moment we thought she
had hit. But she had not, and before she could turn, Sang had topped
the fence and was halfway to the kitchen. Tom Waters always maintained
that he spread his Chinese sleeves and flew. Shortly after a
tremendous smoke arose from the kitchen chimney. Sang had gone back to
cooking.

Now that Mongolian was really in great danger, but no one of the outfit
thought for a moment of any but the humorous aspect of the affair.
Analogously, in a certain small cow-town I happened to be transient
when the postmaster shot a Mexican. Nothing was done about it. The man
went right on being postmaster, but he had to set up the drinks because
he had hit the Mexican in the stomach. That was considered a poor place
to hit a man.

The entire town of Willcox knocked off work for nearly a day to while
away the tedium of an enforced wait there on my part. They wanted me
to go fishing. One man offered a team, the other a saddle-horse. All
expended much eloquence in directing me accurately, so that I should be
sure to find exactly the spot where I could hang my feet over a bank
beneath which there were "a plumb plenty of fish." Somehow or other
they raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager.
I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there,
but it had been dry si