nd he helped me out of the deepest
hole I ever was in. When I struck his ranch one dreary day, two years
before this story begins, afoot and alone, almost ready to drop with
fatigue, and told him that every hoof and horn I had in the world had
been rounded up by a gang of cattle thieves who had driven them into the
Bad Lands to be slaughtered for their hides--when I told him this he not
only expressed the profoundest sympathy for my forlorn condition, but
grub-staked me and sent me into the foot-hills to find a gold mine.

Judging from what I know now there was about as much chance of finding
gold in the region to which he sent me as there was of being struck by
lightning, and, more than that, I couldn't have distinguished the
precious metal from iron pyrites; but I had to do something to pay for
my outfit, and so I went, glad to get away by myself and brood over my
great loss. For I had been pretty well off for a boy of fifteen, I want
you to remember, and every dollar I had made was made by the hardest
kind of knocks.

When I first came out West, I began working on a ranch, taking my pay in
stock at twelve dollars a month. My wages soon grew as my services
increased in value, and as I took to riding like an old timer, I learned
rapidly, because I liked the business; and it was not long before I was
the proud possessor of a herd of cattle worth six thousand dollars. But
it was precarious property in those days,--as uncertain as the weather.
You might be fairly well off when you rolled yourself up in your blanket
at night, and as poor as Job's turkey when you awoke in the morning; and
that's the way it was with me. I was moving my herd to another section
of the country in search of better pasturage, and was passing through a
narrow canyon within two days' journey of the new range that one of my
cowboys had selected for me, when all on a sudden there was a yell of
charging men, whom I at first thought to be Indians, a rifle shot which
killed my horse and injured my leg so badly that I could scarcely crawl
into the nearest thicket out of sight, a hurried stampede of frightened
cattle, and I was a beggar or the next thing to it. My three cowboys
disappeared when the cattle did, and that was all the evidence I wanted
to satisfy me that they were in league with the robbers. Ever since that
time I had lived in hopes that it might be my good fortune to meet them
again under different circumstances. When I learned that two of t