one day when driving to Whitewater. Out on the plain we saw the Kid
yelling like a wild man, with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a
jack-rabbit. That evening I heard him giving Madge a thrilling account
of how he had chased a gray wolf, which, after running many miles, had
turned on him and viciously sprung at his throat, and how he had made
Dynamite jump on the beast and trample its life out. And I recognized
in the tale merely Kid's version for Madge's ears of his chase of the
jackrabbit.

[Illustration: Out on the plain we saw the Kid yelling like a wild man,
with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a jackrabbit.]

For by that time he had become, in her eyes, the exemplar of all that
is inspiringly bold and daring, and he felt it necessary to keep up his
reputation. For her he was a knight of prowess who could do anything
he wished and against whom nothing could prevail. So he told her
wonderful tales of what he had seen and done and been through, and of
his daily adventures, and brought to her the occasional results of his
single-handed combats with birds and beasts. He offered to dig up a
tarantula's nest for her and to catch and tame for her pleasure a
side-winder rattlesnake, or, if she preferred, a golden oriole or a
mocking-bird. It did n't make any difference to him whether she chose
a rattlesnake or an oriole; whatever she wanted him to do, he was ready
to attempt. And Madge looked and listened and worshipped; and Kid,
basking in the warmth of her adoration, swaggered about in ever
increasing pride and importance.

One day, just after he had returned from a two days' trip out on the
range, I heard him telling her a blood-curdling tale of an adventure
with a mysterious and villainous looking Mexican, who, he said, had