"Never sleeps indoors?"
"That's a straight string. He's got a decent enough shack where the boy is, but as soon as it gits dark, old Rifle-Eye he jest makes a pile o' cedar boughs, builds up a fire, an' goes to sleep. For fifty years he ain't slept under a roof summer or winter, an' when once he was in a town over-night, which was about the boy, as I was tellin' ye, he had to get up an' go on the roof to sleep. Lucky," added Bob-Cat with a grin, "it was a flat roof."
"Fifty years is a long time," commented the boy.
"Old Rifle-Eye ain't any spring chicken. He shouldered a musket in the Civil War, an' durin' the Indian mix-ups was generally found floatin' around wherever the fun was thickest. He was mighty close friends with the Pacific scout, old 'Death-on-th'-Trail,' who handed in his time at Portland not long ago."
"Handed in his time?" questioned Wilbur, then, as the meaning of the phrase flashed upon him, "oh, yes, I see, you mean he died."
"Sure, pard, died. You ought ter git Rifle-Eye Bill to spin you some yarns about 'Death-on-th'-Trail.' He'll deny that he's any shakes himself, but he'll talk about his old campmate forever."
The cowboy pointed with his hand to a long, low group of buildings that had just come within sight.
"See, Wilbur," he said, "there's the Double Bar J."