“‘How did it happen?’ asks Jess.
“‘I guess it was blood-pizen,’ she says. ‘His finger swelled up, and he got sicker and sicker and died. Are you all friends of his?’
“‘That we are,’ says Jess, ‘and I want to say right here that there never was a better man than—than your husband.’
“‘Naw, there wasn’t,’ says I, ‘and we wish you good luck. We’ll have to be gittin’ away.’
“We drives off overcome with sorrow on account of the death of them two men. Sometimes yet when I’m ridin’ along by myself, I think of them in their graves, and I feel that me and Jess somehow had a hand in it, and I’d jest give my hoss and saddle if it hadn’t happened. Naw, sir, Lanky. If you see one of them critters in the road, don’t run over him. You might be the innocent means of takin’ off several lives.”
The fire had died to a bed of coals. It was no longer possible to see the night herders, but the indistinct songs reached the camp. Lanky was seated on his bed-roll. The sitters had dwindled to four.
“I didn’t know they were that bad,” observed Lanky.
“That bad!” said Joe Martin. Joe was a veteran of the open range and of the overland trail. Far and near he was known by the name of “Windy Joe,” but Lanky had not learned of this last fact.
“That bad!” said Joe again. “Them snakes that Red and Hank told you about must of been baby snakes. They couldn’t of been real, he-men, venomous reptiles like the one that killed Ike Morgan. Ike was one of the best friends I ever had in this world. He worked on the Yellow House when Red and Hank here was wearin’ foldin’ britches.
“Ike was some cowhand, even if he did have a wooden leg. I reckon I might as well tell you how he got his wooden leg, while I’m about it. You see it was like this. Ike was ridin’ the range one winter day, and as he started up a little canyon, his hoss fell and caught Ike’s leg. The critter broke two of his own legs in the fall, and there he was on Ike’s leg and couldn’t git up. And there was pore Ike wonderin’ if he’d starve before anybody found him.