am Scovel, the greatest bronco buster of his time,
now engaged in piloting tourists.

"Can he ride?" echoed Johnny in answer to our question. "Scovel could
ride an earthquake if she stood still long enough for him to mount! He
rode Steamboat--not Young Steamboat, but Old Steamboat! He rode Rocking
Chair, and he's the only man that ever did do that and not be called on
in a couple of days to attend his own funeral."

This day he told us about one Tom, who lived up in Wyoming, where Johnny
came from. It appeared that in an easier day Tom was hired by some
cattle men to thin out the sheep herders who insisted upon invading the
public ranges. By Johnny's account Tom did the thinning with
conscientious attention to detail and gave general satisfaction for a
while; but eventually he grew careless in his methods and took to
killing parties who were under the protection of the game laws. Likewise
his own private collection of yearlings began to increase with a
rapidity which was only to be accounted for on the theory that a large
number of calves were coming into the world with Tom's brand for a
birthmark. So he lost popularity. Several times his funeral was privily
arranged, but on each occasion was postponed owing to the failure of the
corpse to be present. Finally he killed a young boy and was caught and
convicted, and one morning they took him out and hanged him rather
extensively.

"Tom was mighty methodical," said Johnny. "He got five hundred a head
for killing sheep herders--that was the regular tariff. Every time he
bumped one off he'd put a stone under his head, which was his private
mark--a kind of a duebill, as you might say. And when they'd find that
dead herder with the rock under his head they'd know there was another
five hundred comin' to Tom on the books; they always paid it, too. Once
in a while, though, he'd cut loose in a saloon and garner in some
fellows that wasn't sheep herders. There was quite a number that thought
Tom acted kind of ungentlemanly when he was drinkin'."

We went on and on at a lazy mule-trot, hearing the unwritten annals of
the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon
we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides,
feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we
slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau and came to a camp as
was a camp!

This was roughing it de luxe with a most de-luxey vengeance! Here were