“Yeah, that was purty good runnin’,” said Red. “But you nor the feller Hank was a-tellin’ about either wasn’t as swift as one of them college chaps we had on an outfit where I worked once. Not near so swift. Been a good thing for him if he hadn’t been so fast. Too swift for his own good.”
“How was that?” asked Lanky.
“Here’s the way it was,” said Red. “He was a greenhorn, but he was a-learnin’ fast. Would of made a good cowhand, pore feller. He got to be a purty good shot with a Winchester and six-shooter both, and he was always practicin’ on rabbits and coyotes and prairie-dogs, and things. Then he decided he’d have a lot of critters mounted and send ’em back to his folks.
“Well, he gits everything he wants but a prairie-dog, but he jist can’t git a-holt of one of them critters.”
“Are they hard to hit?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, he could hit ’em all right. He got so he could plug ’em right in the eye, but they always jumped in their holes and got away. They’ll do it every time, Lanky; they’ll do it every time. Why, one day he took his forty-five Winchester and shot one of the critters clean in two, but the front-end grabbed the hind-end and run down the hole with it before he could git there.
“Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell.”
“Well, he asked the boss if there was any way he could git one, and the boss told him to take good aim, and jist as soon as he pulled the trigger to run jist as fast as he could and maybe he’d git there in time to grab the critter before he got away.
“Well, he goes out and finds a prairie dog a-settin’ on his hole a-barkin’ in the sun. He pulls out his six-shooter and takes a good aim at the critter’s eye, and jist as soon as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell, jist like the boss told him to. He got there in time, all right, and bent down to grab the prairie-dog; but jist as he touched it, the bullet hit him in the back jist below the left shoulder-blade. When we found him that evenin’, he was crippled so bad we had to shoot him. Too bad, too, for he had the makin’s of a first-class cowhand.”