time. I ordered Joe to tie his mate behind the trail
wagon and pull out one ox shy.

"Well, fellows, that thing worried me powerful. Half the teamsters,
good, honest, truthful men as ever popped a whip, swore they saw that
ox when they came in. Well, it served a strong argument that a man can
be positive and yet be mistaken. We nooned ten miles from our night
camp that day. Jerry Wilkens happened to mention it at dinner that he
believed his trail needed greasing. 'Why,' said Jerry, 'you'd think
that I was loaded, the way my team kept their chains taut.' I noticed
Joe get up from dinner before he had finished, as if an idea had
struck him. He went over and opened the sheet in Jerry's trail wagon,
and a smile spread over his countenance. 'Come here, fellows,' was all
he said.

"We ran over to the wagon and there"--

The boys turned their backs with indistinct mutterings of disgust.

"You all don't need to believe this if you don't want to, but there
was the missing ox, coiled up and sleeping like a bear in the wagon.
He even had Jerry's roll of bedding for a pillow. You see, the wagon
sheet was open in front, and he had hopped up on the trail tongue and
crept in there to steal a ride. Joe climbed into the wagon, and gave
him a few swift kicks in the short ribs, when he opened his eyes,
yawned, got up, and jumped out."

Bull was rolling a cigarette before starting, while Fox's night horse
was hard to bridle, which hindered them. With this slight delay,
Forrest turned his horse back and continued: "That same ox on the next
trip, one night when we had the wagons parked into a corral, got away
from the herder, tip-toed over the men's beds in the gate, stood on
his hind legs long enough to eat four fifty-pound sacks of flour out
of the rear end of a wagon, got down on his side, and wormed his way
under the wagon back into the herd, without being detected or waking a
man."

As they rode away to relieve the first guard, McCann said, "Isn't he a
muzzle-loading daisy? If I loved a liar I'd hug that man to death."

The absence of our foreman made no difference. We all knew our places
on guard. Experience told us there would be no trouble that night.
After Wyatt Roundtree and Moss Strayhorn had made down their bed and
got into it, Wyatt remarked,--

"Did you ever notice, old sidey, how hard this ground is?"

"Oh, yes," said Moss, as he turned over, hunting for a soft spot, "it
is hard, but we'll forget all that when this