"You can't learn an old dog new tricks," grunted Two-Spot, and then burst out laughing; "but you can change a wolf inter a skunk if you goes about it right. He! He! He!" In a few minutes he threw down the brush and went to the door. "Seein' as how yo're playin' fresh-water clam, do it yoreself!" he snorted and, dodging the other brush, he scurried around to Dave's.
Down on the Bar H, Smitty's arrival made a ripple of excitement. Big Tom was mending a shirt and cursing the clumsiness of his fingers and the sharpness of the needle, when there came the clatter of hoofs outside and he looked up to see Smitty leap from the saddle and jump through the doorway, holding a much-abused Mexican sombrero out at arm's length. It was trampled and soiled and there was a fuzzy-edged rip an inch long in the brim where a 550-grain bullet had ploughed before passing through. Eight years before Smitty had paid twenty-five dollars for the hat, perhaps entirely too much, and next to his saddle it was his most prized possession. It had seen hard service, but he fondly regarded it as being as good as new.
"Lookit my hat!" he cried, jabbing it under the foreman's nose, which caused the needle to find the finger again.
"D—n th' hat!" growled Big Tom. "Take it away from my nose!"
"Lookit it!" insisted Smitty. "Some coyote shot at me from up on Pine Mountain an' plumb ruined it! He came so close I could feel th' slug—cuss it, I smelled it! It fair grazed by nose. Lookit it!"
Big Tom threw the shirt away and took the hat, turning it over in his hands. "I'd say it was close—plumb close," he admitted. "How far off was he?"
"Right over my head—couple dozen feet," answered Smitty. "Here! Don't poke yore blasted finger in it like that! Cuss it, it's bad enough now! That's more like it. I could feel th' concussion an' smell th' smoke. I was ridin' along at a walk, when whango! It near stunned me, it was so close. An' lookit what he done to that hat! There ain't another hat like that on th' whole range!"
"Yo're right, they throw 'em away long before that," retorted Big Tom, an idea coming into his head. "Did you pick up his trail?"