d the boy, without looking up.

"What's on yo' mind? The last five patches yo've drug through that gun
was as clean when they come out as when they went in. Yo' ain't cleanin'
no rifle--yo' studyin' 'bout somethin'."

Connie rested the rifle upon his knees and smiled across the little
oilcloth-covered table: "Looks like winter has come in earnest," he
said. "Listen to her trying to tear the roof off. I've been wishing it
would snow for a week."

"Snow fer a week?"

"No. Wishing for a week."

"Well, now it's come, what yo' goin' to do with it?"

"I'm going out and get that Big Ruff."

"Big Ruff! Yo' mean kill him?"

Connie shook his head: "No. I'm going to catch him. I want him."

Waseche laughed: "What in thunder do yo' want of him, even pervidin'
he's a dog, which the chances is he ain't nothin' but a wolf. An' yo'
don't even know they's any such brute rompin' the hills, nohow. Stories
gits goin' that-a-way. Someone, mebbe, seen a dog or a wolf runnin' the
ridge of Spur Mountain late in the evenin' so he looked 'bout half agin
the size he was, an' they come along an' told it. Then someone else sees
him, er another one, an' he recollects that he heard tell of a monstr'us
big wolf er dog, he cain't recollect which, so he splits the difference
an' makes him half-dog an' half-wolf, an' he adds a big ruff onto his
neck fer good measure, an' tells it 'round. After that yo' kin bet that
every tin-horn that gits within twenty mile of Spur Mountain will see
him, an' each time he gits bigger, an' his ruff gits bigger. It's like a
stampede. Yo' let someone pan out mebbe half a dozen ounces of dust on
some crick an' by the time the news has spread a hundred mile, he's took
out a fortune, an' it's in chunks as big as a pigeon's aig--they ain't
nary one of them ever saw a pigeon's aig--but that's always what them
chunks is as big as--an' directly the whole crick is staked an' a lot of
men goes broke, an' some is killed, an' chances is, the only ones that
comes out ahead is the ones that's staked an' sold out."

"But there are real wolf-dogs--I've seen plenty of 'em, and so have you.
And there are real strikes--look at Ten Bow!"

"Yeh, look at it--but I made that strike myself. The boys down to
Hesitation know'd that if I said they was colour heah it was heah. They
didn't come a kihootin' up heah on the say-so of no tin-horn."

"Yes, and there's a big wolf-dog been over on Spur Mountain for a week,
too. I didn't pay any