“You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on a dark night. I was about half asleep, for I knowed that old Frijole—that was his name—would find the way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along that way, when all of a sudden I finds us both fallin’ down through empty space. Seemed like we never would hit the ground, and before we got bottom, I figgered out what had happened.
“Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was a big sink-hole right out on the mesa. It was as big across as a house, and six lariats deep right straight down—we afterwards measured it—and Frijole had loped off into that dang hole with me, and there we was makin’ for the bottom.
“I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your checks, Red. Some gits it early and some gits it late, but they all gits it.’ Then we hits bottom.
“I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up after while, and there I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You see, Frijole had broke his neck landin’, pore feller. I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to make him lope off into a hole like that. Must of been somethin’.
“Well, I seen there wasn’t nothin’ I could do but wait for daylight and then try to figure out some way to git out; so I jist laid down and took a nap till mornin’.
“When daylight come, I got up and looked around, but the walls was straight up and down, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could git a-holt of to climb out. Then I took the rope off my saddle and begun to look for somethin’ twenty feet or so up that I could rope, thinkin’ I could pull myself up that far, and then maybe rope somethin’ else a little higher up, and pull myself up again, and so on till I was out.
“But there wasn’t a thing, Lanky, not a bush nor a rock, nor nothin’ stickin’ out I could git a loop on. Everything as slick as glass. ‘Well, maybe the boys will come and hunt me,’ I thinks, ‘but how in the hell will they know to look down in here?’
“I waited all day, and not a soul come: and I waited all the next day, and still nobody come. The third day I was still there and no better off than I was in the beginnin’.
“By that time I was wishin’ I was dead, for I had drunk up all the water in my saddle canteen, and I was gittin’ hungry, too.”
“Couldn’t you have eaten some of the horse meat?” asked Lanky.