They would use me as sheriff and
appoint a judge. The prisoner was turned over to the judge and whatever
he said, it had to be carried out exactly. The penalty? Well,
sometimes--it was owing to the crime--but sometimes they would put it up
to about twenty licks with the leggin's. If they was any bendin' trees,
they would lay you across the log. They got tough, all right, but we
sure had fun. We had to salute the boss every mornin', and if we forgot
it...! They never forgot it that night; you'd sure get tried in court.

"We camped on the side of a creek one time, and we had a new man, a sort
of green fellow. This new man unsaddled his horse by the side of the
creek and he lay down there. He had on a big pair of spurs, and I was
watchin' him and studyin' up some kind of prank to play on 'im. So I
went and got me a string and tied one of his spurs to his saddle and
then I told the boss what I'd done and he had one of the fellows put a
saddle on and tie tin cups and pots on it and then they commenced
shootin' and yellin'. This man with the saddle on went pitchin' right
toward that fellow, and that man got up, scared to death, and started to
run. He run the length of the string and then fell down, but he didn't
take time to get up; he went runnin' on his all-fours as fur as he
could, till he drug the saddle to where it hung up. He woulda run right
into the creek, but the saddle held 'im back. We didn't hold kangaroo
court over that! Nobody knowed who did it. Of course, they all knowed,
but they didn't let on. But nobody ever got in a bad humor; it didn't do
no good.

"I've stood up of many a bad night, dozin'. It would be two weeks,
sometimes, before we got to lay down on our beds. I have stood up
between the wagon wheel and the bed (of the wagon) and dozed many a
night. Maybe one or two men would come in and doze an hour or two, but
if the cattle were restless and ready to run, we had to be ready right
now. Sho! Those stormy nights thunderin' and lightnin'! You could just
see the lightnin' all over the steers' horns and your horse's ears and
mane too. It would dangle all up and down his mane. It never interfered
with =you= a-tall. And you could see it around the steer's horns in the
herd, the lightnin' would dangle all over 'em. If the hands (cowboys) or
the relief could get to 'em before they got started to runnin', they
could handle 'em; but if they got started first, they would be pretty
hard to handle.

"The first r