"The cabin had one door an' a little winder. Hasayampa was lyin' on his bunk with a candle stuck in a beer-bottle on a box longside him, right under the winder. Suddenly ol' Killem hopped right through the winder glass and landed plump on top of Hasayampa. He jumped up to kick Killem out, but before he done it, derned if that lion didn't come through the same way, but he knocked over the box and put out the candle. Then Killem and the lion started in for fust blood.
"Hasayampa's six-shooter had been knocked off'n the box and Hasayampa made a break fer the door—the room seemed a leetle bit crowded just then—but the door was locked and the key somewhar on the floor. He begun scratching for that key.
"Just about this time the stovepipe got knocked down. Thar warn't mutch fire, but plenty of smoke. Next thing they hit the table whar he had piled up all the tin plates, cups and pans that he washed on Sundays. Hasayampa said the noise was somethin' fierce, for Killem was yellin', 'Pen and ink,' the lion was screechin' its head off, and both of 'em kickin' tin things in every direction.
"All this time Hasayampa was havin' troubles of his own. He was clawin' the floor, lookin' for the key or his six-shooter. He didn't care which, but he wanted one of 'em and he wanted it in a hurry, which wasn't unreasonable noways, when you remember it was his own property he was huntin'. He finally got on his stomach and spun aroun' like a cartwheel and that was how he found his gun. Trustin' to luck he edged closer to the noise and put his gun against somethin' and fired. Thar was a yelp from Killem, a screech from the lion, then somethin' flopped around on the floor, but whether it was the lion or the dorg, was a conundrum Hasayampa wasn't prepared to answer off hand.
"Things got quiet. He crawled careful till he found the candle and lit it, holdin' his gun ready. Then he looked aroun'. Thar was Killem settin' scrintched up in one corner of the room, a bullet hole through one ear, but thar warn't no lion nowhar to be seen, and Hasayampa figgered he had shot Killem and the lion had gone out the winder, same route he took comin' in. Hasayampa did some tall cussin, and begun pickin' things up, when he seen the end of the lion's tail stickin' out under the bunk. He backed off without losin' no time and shot under the bunk. The lion never even kicked.
"After he'd waited to be sure it was dead, Hasayampa hauled it out by the tail, feelin' mighty big at such a shot in a dark room. Then he begun to hunt to see whar the bullet went in. Thar was just one bullet hole, and that was when he shot it under the bunk. He had missed it clar the fust time, but that lion was as dead as a door-nail when he fired the second shot, and Hasayampa knowed it."
Limber looked at Powell gravely, "Now don't that beat you?"
"But what happened?" demanded the Doctor. "Even Hasayampa must have had some theory about it."
"Well," drawled Limber, "ol' Injun George, wher he heerd about it said he had been puttin' pizen out, and findin' a half et pig had fixed up the carcass for the lion, and he allowed the one that visited Hasayampa had made a meal of that pig. But Hasayampa always stuck to it that the lion had naturally died of heart disease and nervous prostration brung on by the excitement. Anyway, that's how Hasayampa Bill won the lion record in Arizona."
"He proved his right to spell the word both ways," grinned the doctor as Limber reined Peanut toward the head of the herd.