t back to beginnin' all over ag'in
every onct in a while. Now, this mornin' I was settin' up ridin' a
good hoss and thinkin' poetical. Now I'm settin' down restin'. The
sun is shinin' yet, and them jiggers in the brush is chirpin' and the
air is fine, but I ain't thinkin' poetical. I'd sure hate to have a
real lady read what I'm thinkin', if it was in a book. 'Them that sets
on the eggs of untruth,' as the parson says, 'sure hatches lies.' Jest
yesterday I was tellin' in Usher how me bronc piled me when I'd been
ridin' the baggage, which was kind of a hoss-lie. I must 'a' had it
comin'."

He rose and stalked to the roadway. The horned toad, undisturbed,
squatted in the grass and eyed him with bright, expressionless eyes.

"If I was like some," said Sundown, addressing the toad, "I'd pull me
six-shooter, only I ain't got it now, and bling you to nothin'.
Accordin' to law you're the injudicious cause preceding the act, which
makes you guilty accordin' to the statues of this here commonwealth,
and I seen lots of 'em on the same street, in Boston, scarin' hosses to
death and makin' kids and nuss-girls cry. But I ain't goin' to shoot
you. If I was to have the sayin' of it, I'd kind o' like to shoot that
hoss, though. He broke as fine a pome in the middle as I ever writ, to
say nothin' of hurtin' me personal feelin's. Well, so-long, leetle
toad-lizard. Just tell them that you saw me--and they will know the
rest--if anybody was to ask you, a empty saddle and a man a-foot in the
desert is sure circumvential evidence ag'in the hoss. Wonder how far
it is to the Concho?"

With many a backward glance, inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto
_might_ have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of
chance and devotee of the goddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior
to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm
goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ignoring,
with warm adherence to the glowing courses of the sun the frigid
possibilities of the poles. Warmed by the exercise of plodding across
the mesa trail in high-heeled boots, he swung out of his coat and slung
it across his shoulder. Dust gathered in the wrinkles of his boots,
and more than once he stopped to mop his sweating face with his
bandanna. Rise after rise swept gently before him and within the hour
he saw the misty outline of the blue hills to the south. Slowly his
moving shadow shifted, b