"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 him loose by the Lazy B ranch,and when Icame back to git him there wasn't anybody at the ranch and I couldn't find him.The sheep-man who lives about two miles west,under Red Clay butte,told me he seen a fellow in a wolfskin coat,ridin'a pinto bronco,with white eyes,leadin'that pony of mine just two days before;and I hunted round till I hit his trail and then I followed to where I'd reckoned he was headin'for--the Short Pine Hills.When Igot there a rancher told me he had seen the man pass on towards Cedartown,and sure enough when I struck Cedartown I found he lived there in a 'dobe house,just outside the town.There was a boom on the town and it looked pretty slick.There was two hotels and I went into the first,and I says,'Where's the justice of the peace?'says I to the bartender.
"'There ain't no justice of the peace,'says he,'the justice of the peace got shot.'
"'Well,where's the constable?'says I.
"'Why,it was him that shot the justice of the peace!'says he;'he's skipped the country with a bunch of horses.'
"'Well,ain't there no officer of the law left in this town?'says I.
"'Why,of course,'says he,'there's a probate judge;he is over tendin'bar at the Last Chance Hotel.'
"So I went over to the Last Chance Hotel and I walked in there.
'Mornin','says I.
"'Morning','says he.
"'You be the probate judge?'says I.
"'That's what I am,'says he.'What do you want?'says he.
"'I want justice,'says I.
"'What kind of justice do you want?'says he.'What's it for?'
"'It's for stealin'a horse,'says I.
"'Then by God you'll git it,'says he.'Who stole the horse?'says he.
"'It is a man that lives in a 'dobe house,just outside the town there,'says I.
"'Well,where do you come from yourself?'said he.
"'From Medory,'said I.
"With that he lost interest and settled kind o'back,and says he,'There won't no Cedartown jury hang a Cedartown man for stealin'a Medory man's horse,'said he.
"'Well,what am I to do about my horse?'says I.
"'Do?'says he;'well,you know where the man lives,don't you?'says he;'then sit up outside his house,to-night and shoot him when he comes in,'says he,'and skip out with the horse.'
"'All right,'says I,'that is what I'll do,'and I walked off.
"So I went off to his house and I laid down behind some sage-brushes to wait for him.He was not at home,but I could see his wife movin'about inside now and then,and I waited and waited,and it growed darker,and I begun to say to myself,'Now here you are lyin'out to shoot this man when he comes home;and it's getting'dark,and you don't know him,and if you do shoot the next man that comes into that house,like as not it won't be the fellow you're after at all,but some perfectly innocent man a-comin'there after the other man's wife!'
"So I up and saddled the bronc'and lit out for home,"concluded the narrator with the air of one justly proud of his own self-abnegating virtue.
The "town"where the judge above-mentioned dwelt was one of those squalid pretentiously named little clusters of make-shift dwellings which on the edge of the wild country spring up with the rapid growth of mushrooms,and are often no longer lived.In their earlier stages these towns are frequently built entirely of canvas,and are subject to grotesque calamities.When the territory purchased from the Sioux,in the Dakotas,a couple of years ago was thrown open to settlement,there was a furious inrush of men on horseback and in wagons,and various ambitious cities sprang up overnight.The new settlers were all under the influence of that curious craze which causes every true westerner to put unlimited faith in the unknown and untried;many had left all they had in a far better farming country,because they were true to their immemorial belief that,wherever they were,their luck would be better if they went somewhere else.They were always on the move,and headed for the vague beyond.As miners see visions of all the famous mines of history in each new camp,so these would-be city founders saw future St.Pauls and Omahas in every forlorn group of tents pitched by some muddy stream in a desert of gumbo and sage-brush;and they named both the towns and the canvas buildings in accordance with their bright hopes for the morrow,rather than with reference to the mean facts of the day.One of these towns,which when twenty-four hours old boasted of six saloons,a "court-house,"and an "opera house,"was overwhelmed by early disaster.The third day of its life a whirlwind came along and took off the opera house and half the saloons;and the following evening lawless men nearly finished the work of the elements.The riders of a huge trail-outfit from Texas,to their glad surprise discovered the town and abandoned themselves to a night of roaring and lethal carousal.Next morning the city authorities were lamenting,with oaths of bitter rage,that "them hell-and-twenty Flying A cowpunchers had cut the court-house up into parts."It was true.The cowboys were in need of chaps,and with an admirable mixture of adventurousness,frugality,and ready adaptability to circumstances,had made substitutes therefore in the shape of canvas overalls,cut from the roof and walls of the shaky temple of justice.
One of my valued friends in the mountains,and one of the best hunters with whom I ever travelled,was a man who had a peculiarly light-hearted way of looking at conventional social obligations.Though in some ways a true backwoods Donatello,he was a man of much shrewdness and of great courage and resolution.Moreover,he possessed what only a few men do possess,the capacity to tell the truth.He saw facts as they were,and could tell them as they were,and he never told an untruth unless for very weighty reasons.He was pre-eminently a philosopher,of a happy,sceptical turn of mind.He had no prejudices.
