went down into a green valley, inhabited by bee-keepers and other
peaceable folk, where he lived on locusts and honey and forgot the
strenuous life.

All went well with the retired terror of the mountains for a long time.
The only fly in the ointment of his content was Jerky Johnson, who kept
dogs and went pirooting around the hills with a gun, making much noise
and scaring the wits out of coyotes and jack rabbits. Old Clubfoot
realized that his eyes were dimming and his hearing becoming impaired,
and it annoyed him to be always on the alert, lest he should come
across Jerky in the brush and step on him inadvertently.

Jerky's ostensible occupation, from which his front name was derived,
was killing deer and selling jerked venison, but if the greater part of
his stock was not plain jerked beef, the cattle-men in that section
were victims of strange hallucinations and harborers of nefarious
suspicions. Although Clubfoot was credited with large numbers of dead
steers found on the ranges, he was conscious of his own innocence, due
to some extent to the loss of most of his teeth, and he had better
reason than the cow-men had for putting it up to Jerky.

These particulars concerning Mr. Johnson's vocation enable the reader
to appreciate the emotions aroused in the breast of Old Clubfoot when
he found a newspaper blowing about a bee ranch and saw a thrilling
account of his own death at the hands of the redoubtable Jerky Johnson.
He had just tipped over a hive and was about to fill up with luscious
white sage honey when that deplorably sensational newspaper fluttered
under his eye and the scandalous fabrication of Jerky stared him in the
face. "This is the limit," he moaned, and his great heart broke.