meanwhiles, howlin' dirges constant.

"Now I thinks of it I might bresh up the recollections of a mornin' when
I rolls over, blankets an' all, onto something that feels as big as a
boot-laig an' plenty squirmy; an' how I shows zeal a-gettin' to my feet,
knowin' I'm reposin' on a rattlesnake who's bunked in ag'in my back all
sociable to warm himse'f. It's worth any gent's while to see how heated
an' indignant that serpent takes it because of me turnin' out so early
and so swift.

"Then thar's a mornin' when I finds myse'f not five miles down the wind
from a prairie fire; an' it crackin' an' roarin' in flame-sheets twenty
foot high an' makin' for'ard jumps of fifty foot. What do I do? Go
for'ard down the wind, set fire to the grass myse'f, an' let her burn
ahead of me. In two minutes I'm over on a burned deestrict of my own,
an' by the time the orig'nal flames works down to my fire line, my own
speshul fire is three miles ahead an I myse'f am ramblin' along cool an'
saloobrious with a safe, shore area of burnt prairie to my r'ar.

"An' thar's a night on the Serrita la Cruz doorin' a storm, when the
lightnin' melts the tire on the wheel of my trail-waggon, an' me layin'
onder it at the time. An' it don't even wake me up. Thar's the time,
too, when I crosses up at Chico Springs with eighty Injuns who's been
buffalo huntin' over to the South Paloduro, an' has with 'em four hundred
odd ponies loaded with hides an' buffalo beef an' all headed for their
home-camps over back of Taos. The bucks is restin' up a day or two when
I rides in; later me an' a half dozen jumps a band of antelopes jest
'round a p'int of rocks. Son, you-all would have admired to see them
savages shoot their arrows. I observes one young buck a heap clost. He
holds the bow flat down with his left hand while his arrows in their