oid listening to the gloomy tales that were being narrated
around the camp-fire, a number of us got up and went out as if to look
up the night horses on picket. The Rebel and I pulled our picket pins
and changed our horses to fresh grazing, and after lying down among
the horses, out of hearing of the camp, for over an hour, returned to
the wagon expecting to retire. A number of the boys were making down
their beds, as it was already late; but on our arrival at the fire one
of the boys had just concluded a story, as gloomy as the others which
had preceded it.

"These stories you are all telling to-night," said Flood, "remind me
of what Lige Link said to the book agent when he was shearing sheep.
'I reckon,' said Lige, 'that book of yours has a heap sight more
poetry in it than there is in shearing sheep.' I wish I had gone on
guard to-night, so I could have missed these stories."

At this juncture the first guard rode in, having been relieved, and
John Officer, who had exchanged places on guard that night with Moss
Strayhorn, remarked that the cattle were uneasy.

"This outfit," said he, "didn't half water the herd to-day. One third
of them hasn't bedded down yet, and they don't act as if they aim to,
either. There's no excuse for it in a well-watered country like this.
I'll leave the saddle on my horse, anyhow."

"Now that's the result," said our foreman, "of the hour we spent
around that grave to-day, when we ought to have been tending to our
job. This outfit," he continued, when Officer returned from picketing
his horse, "have been trying to hold funeral services over that Pierce
man's grave back there. You'd think so, anyway, from the tales they've
been telling. I hope you won't get the sniffles and tell any."

"This letting yourself get gloomy," said Officer, "reminds me of a
time we once had at the 'J.H.' camp in the Cherokee Strip. It was near
Christmas, and the work was all done up. The boys had blowed in their
summer's wages and were feeling glum all over. One or two of the boys
were lamenting that they hadn't gone home to see the old folks. This
gloomy feeling kept spreading until they actually wouldn't speak to
each other. One of them would go out and sit on the wood pile for
hours, all by himself, and make a new set of good resolutions. Another
would go out and sit on the ground, on the sunny side of the corrals,
and dig holes in the frozen earth with his knife. They wouldn't come
to meals when the cook