[“‘Pie like Mother made,’ said Scipio”][Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
[“High Bear galloped away into the dusk”][56]
[“Out of the door he flew,—squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry”][66]
[“‘Is Sistah Stone heah?’ Leonidas inquired”][108]
[“‘If that I was where I would be, then should I be where I am not’”][126]
[“Waiting for nothing was stamped plain upon him from head to foot”][140]
[“The stage rattled up as I sat”][171]
[“I found nothing new—the plain, the sage-brush, the dry ground—no more”][188]
[“He shuffled the shells straight at the freighter as if he were making love to him”][216]
[“How could he know that Bellyful had only become a road-agent in the last ten minutes?”][226]
[“‘My, but it’s turrable easy to get married’”][284]
[“‘Well, Jimsy, are you going to get me any wood for this stove—or ain’t you?’”][296]

I
HAPPY-TEETH

Scipio Le Moyne lay in bed, held together with bandages. His body had need for many bandages. A Bar-Circle-Zee three-year-old had done him violent mischief at the forks of Stinking Water.[1] But for the fence, Scipio might have swung clear of the wild, rearing animal. When they lifted his wrecked frame from the ground one of them had said:—

“A spade’s all he’ll need now.”

Overhearing this with some still unconquered piece of his mind, Scipio made one last remark: “I ain’t going to die for years and years.”

Upon this his head had rolled over, and no further statements came from him for—I forget how long. Yet somehow, we all believed that last remark of his.

“Since I’ve known him,” said the Virginian, “I have found him a truthful man.”

“Which don’t mean,” Honey Wiggin put in, “that he can’t lie when he ought to.”

Judge Henry always sent his hurt cow-punchers to the nearest surgical aid, which in this case was the hospital on the reservation. Here then, one afternoon, Scipio lay, his body still bound tight at a number of places, but his brain needing no bandages whatever; he was able to see one friend for a little while each day. It was almost time for this day’s visitor to go, and the visitor looked at his watch.