et rag.

She didn't cut far, the Hen didn't. The rest of us was a-setting
around under the mesquite bushes, and she joined the party and set
down too--stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, and holding both
hands jammed tight over it, to keep from yelling out with the laugh
that was pretty near cracking her sides.

Then we all waited till daylight--with Shorty, who had charge of the
lion, working that animal as seemed to be needed whenever Boston
quieted down with his groans. All hands really enjoyed theirselves,
and it was one of the shortest nights I think I ever knowed.

Daylight comes sudden in them parts. One minute it's so darkish you
can't see nothing--and the next minute the sun comes up with a bounce
from behind the mountains and things is all clear.

When the sun did his part of the work and give all the light was
needed, we done ours--which was coming out from among the mesquite
bushes and saying good-morning polite to Boston, up on the roof of the
'dobe, and then taking the hobbles off old man Gutierrez's jackass so
it could walk away home.

The Hen felt she needed to have one more shot, and she took it. "My
brave preserver!" says the Hen, speaking cheerful. "Come down to
me--that I may bedew with tears of gratitude your bones!"

VI

SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING

Some of them summer days in Palomitas was that hot they'd melt the
stuffing out of a lightning-rod, and you could cook eggs in the
pockets of your pants. When things was that way the town was apt to
get quieted down--most being satisfied to take enough drinks early to
make it pleasant spending the rest of the day sleeping 'em off
somewheres in the shade. Along late in the afternoon, though, the wind
always breezed down real cool and pleasant from the mountains--and
then the boys would wake up and get a brace on, and whatever was going
to happen would begin.

Being that sort of weather, nobody was paying no attention worth
speaking of to nothing: and when the Denver train come in--being
about three hours late, like it had a way of being, after a
wash-out--the place was in such a blister that pretty much all you
could hear to show anybody was alive in Palomitas was snores. Besides
Wood--who had to be awake to do his work when the train got there--and
the clump of Mexicans that always hung around the deepo at train-time,
there wasn't half a dozen folks with their eyes open in the whole
town.

Santa Fe Charley was one of the few that