Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-08-09

yu bout In year! Books! Why, honest, reckon
that OF feers got more books than anybody else in
the world, an has got used to gttin all his back
talk outen them that it's jest got to be onhandy TO-
him to use his tongue wi humans.
wall, fin'lly he gifts supper ready, an we eats
An she was shore pea warmer OF supper good as
women folks cookin raised hot bread, an
to marry an live wi the cook that made it. After
supper l smokes an smokes, while he plumb loses
his OF self in book. Fnlly, come bed time, he
give me a nice bunk an l pulls off my coat, hat,
spurs, an boots an gifts into the blankets
Then what does y'u allow that Oh Teller did,
You'd never guess in a thousand year! Fore that
he did that made so sure he was plumb dangerous
crazy it scairt bad shet eye the hull
night long"
''Crazy!' he resumed It's tellin' yu he's
crazy as bedbug an got the goods to prove it;
TO right thar in the cabin befo' me, he pulls off
every last stitch O clothes he had on an then he
up an puts his OF carcass great long white
womans dress reachin' plumb down to his feet, an
goes to bed in it! Yes sir, that's Jist what he dldl
An reckon now yu will admit he's crazy!
Dear old brush bred Tex had never even heard of
such thing nightgown, and l never was quite
sure succeeded in fully convincing him that in
considerable part of humanity always habited
themselves for their nightly repose. Certain it was
that he never got it out of his head that Mack
an unsafe intellectual freak.
How the Trouble Began
THE next day l dropped into ranch routine.
Our most important work was daily range
riding, to throw back into the range any cattle
straying from it, and to make depredations
by Indians rustlers were going
Our position unusually exposed. At the time,
throughout it's long sweep southeast from the Sweet
water in Central Wyoming to Blue Creek in Ne
braska, there only three herds north of the
North Platte River: Mack Peers outfit
Muskrat Pratt & Ferris twenty-five miles east of
Rawhide, and mine on Cottonwood All of
us moved in that autumn To the north two
hundred and thirty miles lay the then new mining
camp of Deadwood, in the heart of the Black Hills,
with no intervening habitation of white men save
the stock tenders cabins, twelve to eighteen miles
apart on the main stage road from Cheyenne
In those days in isolated Deadwood money
often five per cent month, flour hundred dollars
a sack, and beef anything its possessor had nerve
enough to ask for it. Thus our exposed herds were
a great temptation to the 1awless
Within week after my return, we discovered
that Three Crow brand (simiar to three
script Ms, over another, and the third on its
side, with the bottom pointing toward the others
had been spotted for easy mark, chiefly, l sup
pose the property of tenderfoot. First we dis
covered several head of cattle showing brand dis
fgurement, the first two crows made into b S and
the third into g. The Disagreement was so plainly
obvious that it seemed evident the ruSterS planned
to run blazer us by undertaking to cut them on
the spring roundup under cover of gun bluff.
Later came little branding fires in the rough
COWS with their running irons. Several times the
ashes were still hot and the rusters had just gone.
But we could not trail them; for their horses
hoofs were hecvily padded With gunny sacks, and
the country rocky that even lynx eyed Tex
could not follow them.
Perhaps this brand burning in the heart of
range only In any event, We were SO