and found every man,
including the cook, listening intently. He picked a blade of new grass
and began splitting it into tiny threads. The host found boxes for the
women to sit upon, and the men sat down upon the grass.

"Before I come here to work, I was riding for the Circle C. One day I
was riding away down in the Bad-lands alone and my horse slipped in
some shale rock and went lame; strained his shoulder so I couldn't
ride him. That put me afoot, and climbing up and down them hills I
lost my bearings and didn't know where I was at for a day or two. I
wandered around aimless, and got into a strip uh country that was new
to me and plumb lonesome and wild.

"That second day is when I happened across this ruin. I was looking
down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out
and shone straight on to this place. It was right down under me; a
stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled down so it
wasn't so awful high--the tower wasn't. There was a--a--"

"Moat," Branciforte suggested.

"That's the word--a moat around it, and a bridge that was just about
gone to pieces. It had loopholes, like the pictures of castles, and
a--"

"Battlement?" ventured one of the musical-comedy cowgirls.

Andy had not meant to say battlement; of a truth, his conception of
battlements was extremely hazy, but he caught up the word and warmed
to the subject. "Battlement? well I should guess yes! There was about
as elegant a battlement as I'd want to see anywhere. It was sure a
peach. It was--" he hesitated for a fraction of a second. "It was high
as the tower, and it had figures carved all over it; them kind that
looks like kid-drawing in school, with bows and arrows stuck out in
front of 'em, threatening."

"Not the old Greek!" exclaimed one of the girls in a little,
breathless voice.

"I couldn't say as to that," Andy made guarded reply. "I never made no
special study of them things. But they was sure old. And--"

"About how large was the castle?" put in the man who wrote things.
"How many rooms, say?"

"I'd hate to give a guess at the size. I didn't step it off, and I'm a
punk guesser. The rooms I didn't count. I only explored around in the
main hall, like, a little. But it got dark early, down in there, and I
didn't have no matches to waste. And next morning I started right out
at sun-up to find the way home. No, I never counted the rooms, and if
I had, the chances are I'd have likely counted the sa