In Cowboy Land. 415 



Early one spring, now nearly ten years ago, I was out 

 hunting some lost horses. They had strayed from the 

 range three months before, and we had in a roundabout way 

 heard that they were ranging near some broken country, 

 where a man named Brophy had a ranch, nearly fifty 

 miles from my own. When I started thither the weather 

 was warm, but the second day out it grew colder and a 

 heavy snowstorm came on. Fortunately I was able to 

 reach the ranch all right, finding there one of the sons of 

 a Little Beaver ranchman, and a young cowpuncher be- 

 longing to a Texas outfit, whom I knew very well. After 

 putting my horse into the corral and throwing him down 

 some hay I strode into the low hut, made partly of turf 

 and partly of cottonwood logs, and speedily warmed my- 

 self before the fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread, 

 potatoes, fried venison, and tea. My two companions 

 grew very sociable and began to talk freely over their 

 pipes. There were two bunks one above the other. I 

 climbed into the upper, leaving my friends, who occupied 

 the lower, sitting together on a bench recounting different 

 incidents in the careers of themselves and their cronies 

 during the winter that had just passed. Soon one of 

 them asked the other what had become of a certain horse, 

 a noted cutting pony, which I had myself noticed the 

 preceding fall. The question aroused the other to the 

 memory of a wrong which still rankled, and he began 

 (I alter one or two of the proper names) : 



" Why, that was the pony that got stole. I had been 

 workin' him on rough ground when I was out with the 

 Three Bar outfit and he went tender forward, so I turned 



