or an instant, sir--a single instant! I recovered myself with the
assistance of a No'the'n gentleman--a Mr. Parmlee--who was passing."

"Then you think your injuries were entirely due to your fall?"

The colonel paused with the mint julep halfway to his lips, and set it
down. "Sir!" he ejaculated, with astounded indignation.

"You say you were unconscious," returned the editor lightly, "and some
of your friends think the injuries inconsistent with what you believe to
be the cause. They are concerned lest you were unknowingly the victim of
some foul play."

"Unknowingly! Sir! Do you take me for a chuckle-headed niggah, that I
don't know when I'm thrown from a buck-jumping mustang? or do they think
I'm a Chinaman to be hustled and beaten by a gang of bullies? Do
they know, sir, that the account I have given I am responsible for,
sir?--personally responsible?"

There was no doubt to the editor that the colonel was perfectly serious,
and that the indignation arose from no guilty consciousness of a
secret. A man as peppery as the colonel would have been equally alert in
defense.

"They feared that you might have been ill used by some evilly
disposed person during your unconsciousness," explained the editor
diplomatically; "but as you say THAT was only for a moment, and that you
were aware of everything that happened"--He paused.

"Perfectly, sir! Perfectly! As plain as I see this julep before me. I
had just left the Ramierez rancho. The senora,--a devilish pretty
woman, sir,--after a little playful badinage, had offered to lend me
her daughter's mustang if I could ride it home. You know what it is,
Mr. Grey," he said gallantly. "I'm an older man than you, sir, but a
challenge from a d----d fascinating creature, I trust, sir, I am not yet
old enough to decline. Gad, sir, I mounted the brute. I've ridden Morgan
stock and Blue Grass thoroughbreds bareback, sir, but I've never thrown
my leg over such a blanked Chinese cracker before. After he bolted I
held my own fairly, but he buck-jumped before I could lock my spurs
under him, and the second jump landed me!"

"How far from the Ramierez fonda were you when you were thrown?"

"A matter of four or five hundred yards, sir."

"Then your accident might have been seen from the fonda?"

"Scarcely, sir. For in that case, I may say, without vanity,
that--er--the--er senora would have come to my assistance."

"But not her husband?"

The old-fashioned shirt-frill which the