more about the Indian war at Separ until I sat on the kitchen doorstep
at Apache Teju, one evening some years later, and beguiled Texas Bill
into telling me yarns of his long and checkered experience as a cowboy.

The cool, soft breath of evening filled the air, the alfalfa field
glowed its most vivid emerald in the yellow rays of the setting sun,
and in the same rich light the gray, barren hillside beyond shone like
beaten gold. And Texas Bill, just in from a week's trip on the range,
soothed and inspired by the civilizing influences of the ranch-house, a
shave, clean clothes, and his supper, unbent from his usual bashful
dignity and talked.

Texas Bill was tall and big and loose-jointed, and he spoke always in a
long, soft, indifferent drawl. He held two articles of belief which no
man might dispute without getting sight of the knife in his bootleg or
the revolver on his hip. One was that Texas was the biggest and best
State in the Union; and the other, that the cow business was no longer
fit for a gentleman to follow. He lounged on a bench beside the door
and told me tales of the range and the round-up, of herds of cattle
stampeded by the smell of water, of long rides in blinding sand storms,
of the taking in of the tenderfoot, of centipedes and side-winders, of
Indian fights and narrow escapes.

"Were you ever in one of these Indian attacks yourself?" I asked, for
his Indian yarns had been about other men.

Texas Bill solemnly considered the heel of his boot a moment, and then
just as solemnly replied:

"Yes, I was killed by the Apaches oncet."