the Canadian at a Triangle-dot camp called Kingman. This yere is a
one-room stone house, stark an' sullen an' alone on the desolate plains,
an' no scenery worth namin' but a half-grown feeble spring. This Kingman
ain't got no windows; its door is four-inch thick of oak; an' thar's
loopholes for rifles in each side which shows the sports who builds that
edifice in the stormy long-ago is lookin' for more trouble than comfort
an' prepares themse'fs. The two cow-punchers I finds in charge is scared
to a standstill; they allows this Kingman's ha'nted. They tells me how
two parties who once abides thar--father an' son they be--gets downed by
a hold-up whose aim is pillage, an' who comes cavortin' along an'
butchers said fam'ly in their sleep. The cow-punchers declar's they
hears the spooks go scatterin' about the room as late as the night before
I trails in. I ca'ms 'em--not bein' subject to nerve stampedes myse'f,
an' that same midnight when the sperits comes ha'ntin' about ag'in, I
turns outen my blankets an' lays said spectres with the butt of my mule
whip--the same when we strikes a light an' counts 'em up bein' a couple
of kangaroo rats. This yere would front up for a mighty thrillin' tale
if I throws myse'f loose with its reecital an' daubs in the colour plenty
vivid an' free.

"Then thar's the time I swings over to the K-bar-8 ranch for corn--bein'
I'm out of said cereal--an' runs up on a cow gent, spurs, gun-belt, big
hat an' the full regalia, hangin' to the limb of a cottonwood, dead as
George the Third, an' not a hundred foot from the ranch door. An' how
inside I finds a half-dozen more cow folks, lookin' grave an' sayin'
nothin'; an' the ranch manager has a bloody bandage about his for'ead,
an' another holdin' up his left arm, half bandage an' half sling, the
toot ensemble, as Colonel Sterett calls it, showin' sech recent war that
the blood's still wet on the cloths an' drops on the floor as we talks.
An' how none of us says a word about the dead gent in the cottonwood or