The Last of the Plainsmen 



a string of long, white hairs, then said: &quot;I pulled 

 these out of his tail with my lasso; it missed his left 

 hind hoof about six inches.&quot; 



There were six of the hairs, pure, glistening white, 

 and over three feet long. Stewart examined them 

 in expressive silence, then passed them along; and 

 when they reached me, they stayed. 



The cave, lighted up by a blazing fire, appeared to 

 me a forbidding, uncanny place. Small, peculiar 

 round holes, and dark cracks, suggestive of hidden 

 vermin, gave me a creepy feeling; and although not 

 over-sensitive on the subject of crawling, creeping 

 things, I voiced my disgust. 



&quot; Say, I don t like the idea of sleeping in this hole. 

 I ll bet it s full of spiders, snakes and centipedes and 

 other poisonous things.&quot; 



Whatever there was in my inoffensive declaration 

 to rouse the usually slumbering humor of the Ari- 

 zonians, and the thinly veiled ridicule of Colonel 

 Jones, and a mixture of both in my once loyal Cali 

 fornia friend, I am not prepared to state. Maybe 

 it was the dry, sweet, cool air of Nail Canon ; maybe 

 my suggestion awoke ticklish associations that worked 

 themselves off thus; maybe it was the first instance 

 of my committing myself to a breach of camp 

 ^uette. Be that as it may, my innocently expressed 

 * ave rise to bewildering dissertations on 



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