"Just at dusk a horse of brown, wet with sweat, came panting down

Through the little lane at the cow-ranch and stopped at Bessie's door.

But the cowboy was asleep and his slumbers were so deep

That little Bess could not awake him, if she were to try forevermore.

• • • • • • • • •

"Now you have heard this story told, by the young and by the old,

Way down there at the cow-ranch the night the Apaches came.

Heard them speak of the bloody fight, how the chief fell in the flight

And of those panic-stricken warriors, when they speak Veniro's name."

• • • • • • • • •