by, were a splendid lot of fellows, smart,
intelligent, self-reliant and resourceful, also hard and willing
workers. If they liked you, they would stay with you in any kind of
trouble and be thoroughly loyal. No such merry place on earth as the cow
camp, where humour, wit and repartee abounded. The fact of every man
being armed, and in these far-off days probably a deadly shot, tended to
keep down rowdyism and quarrelling. If serious trouble did come up, it
was settled then and there quickly and decisively, wrongly or rightly.
Let me instance a case.

In round-up camp one day a few hot words were suddenly heard, guns began
to play, result--one man killed outright and two wounded. The case of
one of the wounded boys was rather peculiar. His wound was in the thigh
and amputation was necessary. Being a general favourite, we, myself and
partners, took turns nursing him, dressing his wounds and cheering him
up as well as we could. He rapidly recovered, put on flesh and was in
high spirits, and, as the doctor said, quite out of danger; but one day
this big strong young fellow took it into his foolish head that he was
going to die. Nothing would persuade him to the contrary, and so die he
did, and that without any waste of time. In preparing a body for burial
it is the custom, a burial rite indeed, not to wrap the corpse in a
shroud, but to dress it in a complete ordinary costume, a brand-new suit
of black clothes, white shirt, socks, etc., etc.--whether boots or not I
forget, but rather think so--dress him probably better than the poor
fellow was ever dressed before, and in this manner he was laid in the
ground. The man who started the shooting was named "Windy M'Gee,"
already an outlaw, but then cook for our mess wagon. Shortly afterwards
he killed a prominent lawyer in our little town, or at least we
suspected him strongly, though another man suffered for the crime; but
such incidents as these were too common to attract world-wide
attention.

On another occasion one of our men got shot in the thigh, by whom or how
I do not now remember, but he was a different sort of man from the boy
just mentioned. We knew him to be quite a brave, nervy man in action,
having been in one of our fighting scrapes with rustlers; but as a
patient he showed a most cowardly disposition, developing a ferocious
temper, rejecting medical advice, cursing everybody who came around, so
that he lay for months at our charge, until we really got to wish