and hard weather. There was what looked like awhat-you-may-call-'em--
a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge
business. Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it
yuh needed to use your imagination on. I laid there for quite a spell
looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down
there. It didn't look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a
school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and
prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen."

"The deuce! A castle in the Bad-lands!" ejaculated Branciforte.

"That's what it was, all right. I found a trail it would make a
mountain sheep seasick to follow, and I got down into the coulee. It
was lonesome as sin, and spooky; but there was a spring close by, and
a creek running from it; and what is a treat in that part uh the
country, it was good drinking and didn't have neither alkali nor
sulphur nor mineral in it. It was just straight water, and you can
gamble I filled up on it a-plenty. Then I shot a rabbit or two that
was hanging out around the ruins, and camped there till next day, when
I found a pass out, and got my bearings by the river and come on into
camp. So when you throw slurs on our plumb newness and shininess, I've
got the cards to call yuh. That castle wasn't built last summer,
Mister. And whoever did build it was some civilized. So there yuh
are."

Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into
the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his
head at its accustomed don't-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the
door and the sunlight.