IN COWBOY LAND. 



217 



naturally a staunch upholder of the existing 

 order of things. But while he never boasted 

 of his past deeds, he never apologized for 

 them, and evidently would have been quite 

 as incapable of understanding that they 

 needed an apology as he would have been in- 

 capable of being guilty of mere vulgar boast- 

 fulness. He did not often allude to his 

 past career at all. When he did, he recited 

 its incidents perfectly naturally and simply, 

 as events, without any reference to or regard 

 for their ethical significance. It was this 

 quality which made him at times a specially 

 pleasant companion, and always an agreeable 

 narrator. The point of his story, or what 

 seemed to him the point, was rarely that which 

 struck me. It was the incidental sidelights 

 the story threw upon his own nature and the 

 somewhat lurid surroundings amid which he 

 had moved. 



On one occasion when we were out to- 

 gether we killed a bear, and after skinning it, 

 took a bath in a lake. I noticed he had a 

 scar on the side of his foot and asked him 

 how he got it, to which he responded, with in- 

 difference : 



" Oh, that ? Why, a man shootin' at me to 

 make me dance, that was all." 



I expressed some curiosity in the matter, 

 and he went on : 



" Well, the way of it was this : It was 

 when I was keeping a saloon in New Mexico, 

 and there was a man there by the name of 



