had in a roundabout way heard that they were ranging near some broken
country, where a man named Brophy had a ranch, nearly fifty miles from
my own. When I started thither the weather was warm, but the second day
out it grew colder and a heavy snowstorm came on. Fortunately I was able
to reach the ranch all right, finding there one of the sons of a Little
Beaver ranchman, and a young cowpuncher belonging to a Texas outfit,
whom I knew very well. After putting my horse into the corral and
throwing him down some hay I strode into the low hut, made partly of
turf and partly of cottonwood logs, and speedily warmed myself before
the fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread, potatoes, fried venison,
and tea. My two companions grew very sociable and began to talk freely
over their pipes. There were two bunks one above the other. I climbed
into the upper, leaving my friends, who occupied the lower, sitting
together on a bench recounting different incidents in the careers of
themselves and their cronies during the winter that had just passed.
Soon one of them asked the other what had become of a certain horse, a
noted cutting pony, which I had myself noticed the preceding fall. The
question aroused the other to the memory of a wrong which still rankled,
and he began (I alter one or two of the proper names):

"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 I came 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 I got 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 justic